This unusual piece is an elephant-bone carving from Western Africa, and is a virtuoso example of the retention of traditional carving and artistic skills into the modern period. It comprises a fairly tall, heavy figure of a seated woman with her feet wrapped around her legs. The torso is fairly long, with the breasts pressed flat against the body by a strap running around the circumference. The face is flat, with arched brows and a long nose that reaches the slightly smiling mouth. The top of the head is flat, lending the face a triangular form. The eyes are in the coffee-bean format. The woman is cradling a child in her arms, which has turned to look at the viewer.
This piece does not clearly relate to any single West African group. The material is a Lega standard, the eyes are either archaic or Kuba, the mouth is Songye, the detailing and pose are Luba, and the strongly modeled lines are Shona. They are certainly unknown together. The piece is too big for Lega, nothing else is Kuba apart from the eyes, the face isn’t lined, as it would be if it were Songye…the identification is fraught with difficulty. It is likely to be a reiterative piece, with no specific magico-religious function, although the close match to another, similar piece in our collection may indicate that it is part of a familial group, perhaps designed for a domestic altar or similar. The maternity theme, as one of the oldest themes in art, needs no explication.
This is a striking piece of African design.