A fine Bamum terracotta pipe bowl

Estimate

6,000 - 9,000 USD

bidding is closed

Description

of overall bold proportions, with a hollow clay cylinder on the underside for use, the full cheeks and broad nose leading to the rimmed hemispherical eyes, and wearing an elaborate headdress comprised of small heads and openwork links; slightly mottled reddish orange surface overall.

Provenance

Murray Frum, Toronto
Acquired from Christian Duponcheel, New York and Brussels, December 8, 1980

Exhibited

Detroit, The Detroit Institute of Arts, African Terra Cottas South of the Sahara, November 22, 1972 - January 31, 1973
New York, African-American Institute, Art of the Cameroon, February 22 - June 15, 1980

Literature

Detroit 1972: number 246
African Arts, 'Exhibition Review, African Terra Cotta South of the Sahara', 1973, Volume VI, number 3: 66
Robbins and Nooter 1989: 325, figure 840

Catalogue Note

In Cameroon, tobacco was smoked by both men and women using pipes with bowls carved from hardened clay with stems, usually of wood or brass, inserted at the top. See Northern (1975: 109, figure 136) for a pipe bowl by the same hand in the collection of the Linden-Museum Stuttgart (no. 66449), collected in 1911; and Harter (1973: 28, figure 15) for another pipe bowl by the same hand, formerly in the collection of Charles Ratton.