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 male torso and head projecting from what appears to be an ornate altar or perhaps a seat/throne. The latter is wedge-shaped, each side bearing large “eyes” rendered as cruciform designs within circles, with very small nose and tubular mouth on the very front of the object. The torso is elongated, with a modest belly and highly defined nipples and umbilicus. The arms are short and wrapped around to the front of the figure, the hands on the stomach. The head is large and roughly triangular in shape, with coffee-bean eyes, a sharp brows-nose complex and a square to rectangular mouth.
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 other elements – such as the base/altar – are unknown in any extant group. 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.
This is a striking piece of African design.