Superb prestige pipe bowl
Adolf Diehl, Germany (“74789 Bali.Diehl”)
Linden-Museum, Stuttgart, Germany (inventory number: “L. 1085/139”)
Baudouin de Grunne, Wezembeek-Oppem, Belgium (before 1970)
Artcurial, Paris, 5 December 2006, lot 327
Adolf Diehl was a german fieldcollector and General Director of Plantations in Cameroon as well as representative of the Gesellschaft Nordwest Kamerun. He collected hundreds of objects on commission for the ethnographic museums in Leipzig and Stuttgart.
Description
fired clay, black coating, red pigment, cylindrical corpus, rising from disc-shaped base, a large face with horn-like projections in the centre, mask faces around the rim, handwritten collection numbers in white paint at the bottom and on the backside: “74789 Bali.Diehl” and “L. 1085/139”, additionally labelled “537”, slightly dam., minor missing part, rim of the pipe bowl rep. in several places;
as regalia of Fons and title-holders, prestige pipes were indispensable personal prestige items, cared for, carried after their owners by retainers, and displayed as status indicators on ceremonial occasions.
Littérature comparée
Northern, Tamara, The Art of Cameroon, Washington D.C. 1984.p. 120 ff.Publications
AHDRC: 0139814