Bamileke Bird Headcrest, Cameroon

Marc and Denyse Ginzberg, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner on June 17, 1992

The Center for African Art, New York, Wild Spirits, Strong Medicine: African Art and the Wilderness, May 10 - August 20, 1989; additional venues:
Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, September 21 - November 22, 1989
The Lowe Art Museum, The University of Miami, Miami, FL, December 14, 1989 - January 28, 1990
The Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH, February 18 - April 30, 1990
The Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA, September 15 - December 1, 1990

Martha G. Anderson and Christine Mullen Kreamer, Wild Spirits Strong Medicine: African Art and the Wilderness, New York, 1989, p. 138, cat. 108
Marc Ginzberg, The African Art Collection of Marc and Denyse Ginzberg, New York, 2003, no. 41

In the kingdoms of Cameroon's Grasslands, the king (fon) was dependent on kwifon, a secret society composed of the heads of the important clans. Kwifon's power rested on special spiritual knowledge and its access to magic and spiritual forces which manifested themselves in the appearance of highly respected masks at important religious occasions. The bird represented in the Ginzberg headcrest could be a hawk, crow, or touraco. See Koloss (in Homberger 2008: 71-75) and Anderson and Kreamer (1989: 138) for further discussion. For a closely related mask in the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, which was collected before 1914 see Northern (1984: 156, cat. 88).