IMPORTANT ELABORATELY CARVED COTTONWOOD TALL CASE CLOCK, PROBABLY NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA, CIRCA 1928

Overall good condition, possibly lacking molding on left and right sides, with powderpost beetle damage to proper left side of case, with recent break to the back of the cresting board, secondary wood pine.
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This exceptional tall case clock has a history of ownership in New Orleans and is inscribed on the top of the cornice in chalk: Mother’s Old Voodoo Clock. The pendulum is inscribed Lefévre Horloger/1928, suggests a French origin for the works as does the French globe that is signed J. Forest, 17,19 Rue de Bucy…, Paris. The clock, carved out of wood native to the Southern United States, incorporates Afro-American-Caribbean motifs with a western furniture form. The clock’s carved ornament suggest a creolization of African, Caribbean, European, and American forms, symbols, and world views. Their design appears directly inspired from symbols and representations of spiritual beliefs that were the result of the African diaspora that are practiced in North and South America and the Caribbean such as Obeah, Vodou (or Voodoo) and Santeria.

According to Dr. Babatunde Lawal of Virginia Commonwealth University:

“This ‘Voodoo’ case clock most likely derives the label from its discovery in Louisiana and from the motifs adorning it, especially the female figure and snakes—two motifs that loom large in Louisiana’s ‘voodoo’ rituals.

The rituals were introduced to the Americas as part of Vodou religion from West Africa during the transatlantic slave trade between the 15th and 19th centuries.  The religion was (and is still) particularly strong among the Fon of present-day Republic of Benin (formerly Dahomey). In Fon language, ‘Vodou’ means ‘spirit.’ According to Fon cosmology, the Great Spirit and Goddess NANA BULUKU created the universe in the form of a calabash (MAWU--LISA) with two halves.  The top half of the calabash (LISA) signifies the male-SKY or celestial realm, and the bottom half (MAWU), the female-EARTH or physical world.  Sustaining the calabash in space is a coiled serpent DAN/DAMBALLA, which also has male and female aspects—Damballa-Wedo and Ayidoh-Wedo respectively—both signifying procreation, gender complementarity, regeneration, vitality, prosperity and eternity, etc.¹

Although Vodou reached North America at the beginning of the slave trade, the number of its practitioners increased exponentially after the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) which forced several French planters and their slaves (as well as some free blacks) to flee the island and seek refuge in Louisiana.  The arrival of more refugees from Haiti and the Dominican Republic in subsequent years would transform Louisiana’s capital, New Orleans, into a ‘mecca’ of Vodou rituals in North America and where Marie Laveau (1794/1801-1881) emerged to become the ‘Voodoo Queen’ for a good part of the 19th century until her death in 1881 when she was succeeded by her daughter, Marie Laveau II (1827-1895).  Both ‘queens’ popularized public and private Vodou rituals involving the use of snakes to mediate between humanity and supernatural forces.  They were patronized by blacks, whites and creoles.”²

Dr. Lawal teaches African, African American and African Diaspora Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia. He has published extensively on the subject and is the author of The Gelede Spectacle: Art, Gender, and Social Harmony in an African Culture (Seattle and London: 1996), and Yoruba: Visions of Africa (Milan, Italy: 2012), among others. He is currently completing a book on Continuity and Change in African American Art,

¹ Melville J. and Frances S. Herskovits, “An Outline of Dahomean Religious Beliefs.” Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association 41, (New York, 1933); Pierre Verger, Notes sur le Culte des Orisa et Vodun a Bahia, la Baie de tous les Saints, au Bresil et a l’Ancient Cote des Esclaves en Afrique, (Dakar: IFAN, 1957); William J. Argyle, The Fon of Dahomey: History and Ethnography of the Old Kingdom, (Oxford, 1966) and Suzanne Blier, African Vodun: Art, Psychology and Power, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). See also Babatunde Lawal, "Ejiwapo: The Dialectics of Twoness in Yoruba Art and Cullture), African Arts 41 (1), Spring 2008, page 27.
² Robert, Tallant, Voodoo in New Orleans, (Pelican Publishing Company, 1980); Jim Haskins, Voodoo and Hoodoo: The Craft as Revealed by Traditional Practitioners, (Lanham, New York and London: Scarborough House, 1990); Gwendolyn M. Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century, (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992) and Carolyn M. Lang, A New Orleans Voudou Priestess: The Legend and Reality of Marie Laveau, (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006).

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