Large prestige stool with leopard · Cameroon Grassfields, Bamileke · ID: 3044194
sold
EUR 2,500
Provenance
Berndt Helleberg, Stockholm, SwedenSize
H: 48,5 cm
D: 47 cm
H: 19.1 inch
D: 18.5 inch
Description
wood, pigments,
Objects of such powerful expressivity influenced modern artists such as Emil Nolde and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in their works.
The stool is the foremost prestige object as symbol of royal office.
Coupled with royal icons used as caryatids, the stool explicitly upholds the Fon’s authority. The leopard embodies certain attributes like speediness, survivability and aggressiveness which were transferred on the king. So he became the most important royal symbol, like an “alter ego” of the king.
Comparing literature
Northern, Tamara, The Art of Cameroon, Washington D.C. 1984, p. 105 Grisebach, Lucius, Kirchner und die Kunst Kameruns, Zürich 2008
Publications
AHDRC: 0153591