A fine Tabwa/Jiji seated female figure

seated on a tall, openwork stool, the rounded hips leading to elongated torso tapered at the center and flaring to broad shoulders, the bent arms held out to the sides and holding a hollowed vessel, the attenuated neck supporting the head with jutting, softly rounded jaw, pursed lips and outlined, coffee-bean eyes framed by notched scarification and C-shaped ears and wearing an incised, cap-like coiffure; the body decorated with incised dentil-molded and diamond-shaped scarification. '493' in white pigment at the reverse; deep brown surface overall.

Margaret Webster Plass Collection, Philadelphia
Henri L. Schouten, Amsterdam, January 2, 1969

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Milwaukee Public Museum, Selections from The William W. Brill Colllection of African Art, May 5 - August 31, 1969 (for additional venues see bibliography, Milwaukee 1969)

Lehuard 1978: 19
Maurer and Roberts 1985: 246, figure 175 
Robbins and Nooter 1989: 513, figure 1347

Tabwa sculpture over the years has been attributed to many neighbors including the Tumbwe, Luba, Hemba and Boyo. Little specific information about individual artists or regions which specific works came from remains. What is known is that the Tabwa had a great deal of interaction with their neighbors as well as a great deal of migration (Neyt in Maurer and Roberts 1985: 75).    

According to Neyt (ibid.: 79) at a certain point well before 1900 a Tabwa workshop came into existence near Ujiji, a town on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika in western Tanzania. Works from this workshop are characterized by a minimalist carving style displaying a particularly shaped jawline and an upturned head. Another example from this workshop was collected in 1905 by Deininger and is now in the collection of the Munich Museum für Völkerkunde (ibid.: figure 55).

Tabwa carvers were able to perpetuate genealogical and ancestral traditions through a combination of sculptural forms, and to suggest essential traits of Tabwa cosmic, social, political and religious identity through the symbols of scarification. The carver of the Brill figure clearly had a grasp of these concepts in his inventive and strong composition. The scarification along the central torso recalls 'the Mwila Divide, to either side of which streams flow and along which one may encounter vengeful ghosts or culture heroes, divided along this same midline [...; symbolizing] the greater universe of phenomena and ideas' (ibid.: 33). The diamond shape respresents the meeting of the 'moon', or a continued cycle of fertility and life (ibid.: 78). 'Similar ideas are reflected in the crossed lines of scarification on the face [...] called sura ya msalaba, face of the cross, and was one of the most common scarifcations practiced by the earlier Tabwa [...]. A vertical line divides the forehead and meets lines from each ear extending to the corner of the corresponding eyes [...]. This scarification emphasizes the point above the bride of one's nose as the seat of wisdom and foresight or "transforming vision"' (ibid.: 34-35). In the Brill figure, through the symbolism of the scarification one sees a joining of the lower portion of the body as a representation of fertility together with the upper portion, or intellect, to suggest the total being of an individual in the Tabwa universe.