Kwere Power Figure, Tanzania

Allan Stone, New York

The exceedingly rare power figure from the Allan Stone Collection can be attributed to the Kwere people of Tanzania by comparison to the celebrated face mask from the Fred Jahn Collection which was included in the exhibition Africa: The Art of a Continent at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. In the accompanying catalog, Phillips (1995: 155, text to cat. 2.39) notes: "A variety of initiation associations or 'secret' societies existed among the Kwere and the other matrilineal peoples of eastern Tanzania during pre-colonial times. These were hierarchically organized institutions whose membership was drawn from a number of different lineages and villages. Both male and female associations existed and some may have permitted both men and women to become members. [...] During the period of German rule initiation associations were instrumental in co-ordinating opposition against an oppressive colonial regime. They were therefore banned after the maji-maji upraisings of 1905, and by the beginning of World War I had largely died out."

The power figure from the Allan Stone Collection, of great antiquity and with signs of long ritual use, was in all likelihood created long before.