Cuillère anthropomorphe ·  Côte d'Ivoire, Yaouré · ID: 3047945

Description

wood, pigments, small crack (handle), base

Extremely fine carving of outstanding quality.

The handle end of the small spoon is carved with a finely carved mask representing a ram “bla”. Such elaborately decorated spoons were always owned by important and wealthy men in earlier times.

A spoon with a very similar stylistic and delicacy of workmanship, which
could possibly have come from the same workshop, depicted in Homberger, Zurich 1990, p. 49, fig. 23.

In this canon of forms, there is a spoon from the Félix Fénéon
collection, which was already collected before 1935 (AHDRC 0062299).

Littérature comparée

Homberger, Lorenz (Hg.), Löffel in der Kunst Afrikas, Zürich 1990, p. 49, ill. 49 Sweeney (James Johnson), "African Sculpture", Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,1970: fig.54 (AHDRC 0062299)

Publications

AHDRC: 0164093

Exposition

Paris, France: "Yaouré. Visages, du Sacré", Galerie Éric Hertault, June 2019