Bâton, Tsonga, Afrique du Sud

Le « Maître des Petites Mains »
Par Sandra Klopper

Entre la fin du XIX^e et le début du XX^e siècle, dans le Sud-Est de l’Afrique, des sculpteurs indigènes - dont des migrants Tsonga - créèrent des ateliers à proximité des grands centres urbains tels que Durban et Pietermaritzburg. Ils y réalisèrent des bâtons et autres sculptures figuratives extraordinairement ouvragés. A l’Est du Cap, d’autres sculpteurs se sont aussi spécialisés dans la production de bâtons rituels adoptant la forme spiralée d’un corps de serpent. Certains, datant des années 1870, étaient surmontés de petits pommeaux ; d’autres, les plus tardifs, incluaient des animaux ou des figures humaines.

A l’image de l’œuvre présentée ici, le « Maître des Petites Mains » semble s’être concentré sur la production de bâtons au manche relativement long - plusieurs d’entre eux ayant perdu leur manche à un moment de leur histoire. Au moins un exemple connu représente une femme arborant le chignon caractéristique des femmes mariées Zulu de la province colonisée du Natal, à la fin du XIX^e et au début du XX^e siècle. Ce bâton fait partie d’une collection d’objets très variés, donnée au Ditsong National Museum of Cultural History de Pretoria en 1960 (ET60/4/2). Il n’existe malheureusement pas d’information sur le lieu, la date et le contexte de son acquisition.

Parmi les autres exemplaires connus de ce Maître figurent des personnages masculins, mais beaucoup sont de sexe indéterminé, et la plupart ne font aucune référence ni à l’âge ni au statut social. Il est probable que ces omissions reflètent les transformations apparues dans les relations sociales indigènes durant la deuxième moitié du XIX^esiècle. A cette époque en effet, l’érosion des schémas d’autorité traditionnels et l’émergence d’une économie monétaire ont permis aux jeunes paysans migrants d’acquérir des objets jusque-là principalement associés à l’autorité et/ou au pouvoir des spécialistes rituels.

S’adaptant à ce nouveau marché, le « Maître des Petites Mains » s’est concentré sur la forme plutôt que sur les éléments symboliquement forts, développant ainsi un style très caractéristique, aux détails délicatement sculptés - en particulier, comme ici, les petites mains et les traits anatomiques superbement équilibrés - bien qu’abstraits - telles les oreilles et les fesses.

The "Master of the Small Hands"

In the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, indigenous carvers from the south-east African region, including Tsonga migrants, appear to have formed workshops in or near large urban centers like Durban and Pietermaritzburg, where they produced highly finished and extraordinarily detailed figurative staffs and other figurative carvings. Further south, Moravian missionaries provided vocational training to artists who made staffs surmounted by carved heads, some with eyes of inlaid lead that point to traditions associated with German folk art. Other carvers, who specialized in staffs with snakes spiraling up their stems that were associated with ritual specialists, also worked in the Eastern Cape. Examples of these staffs dating to the 1870s were surmounted by small knobs, but later ones include animals or human figures.

 Many of these figurative carvers worked for both indigenous patrons and the growing market for exotic curios that was created, initially, by white settlers who first moved to south-east Africa in large numbers in course of the 1850s.  This demand for figurative works was augmented, later on, by British soldiers who passed through the region during the Anglo-Zulu war of 1879 and the Anglo-South African War of 1899-1902. When carvings of this kind were displayed in Britain in 1907, they were labeled ‘Natal Art’; but over time, most ended up being attributed to ‘the Zulu’, whose mythical status was cemented by the popular perception of them as a warrior nation. It was only towards the end of the 20^th century, when collectors and art historians began to develop a renewed interest in the art of south-east Africa that this narrow, ethnic designation was challenged, and that the hands of individual artists such as the ‘Baboon Master’ and the Master of the Small Hands, were identified.

 The "Master of the Small Hands" appears to have focused on the production of staffs with comparatively long shafts, like the one on offer here.  (Several others have lost their shafts at some point in their histories). At least one surviving example depicts a female figure with a very distinctive top-knot similar to those worn by married, Zulu-speaking women living in colonial Natal in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. This staff forms part of a very diverse collection of objects donated to the Ditsong: National Museum of Cultural History in Pretoria in 1960 (ET60/4/2), but there is unfortunately no information on where, when or how it was acquired.

 A few of the other known examples by this Master depict male figures, but many are of indeterminate sex, and most lack any obvious reference to age or social status.  The reasons for this may be sought, at least in part, in the fact that outside buyers were probably indifferent to markers of status such as the head-rings commonly worn by married (or mature men) in the Zulu kingdom and beyond.  But omissions like these probably also reflect transformations in indigenous social relations in the second half of the 19^th century, when the erosion of traditional patterns of authority and the emergence of a cash economy made it possible for young migrant labourers to purchase items that until then would have been associated with chiefly authority and/or the power of ritual specialists.

 Addressing the needs of these new markets, the "Master of the Small Hands" focused on form rather than symbolically potent markers such as head-rings, in the process developing a very distinctive style with delicately carved details like tiny hands and exquisitely balanced - but abstracted - anatomical features such as ears and buttocks.