Effigy vessel

Artist Voania, Chief of Muba (African, Woyo, died 1928)

Date1875-1910

MediumEarthenware

DimensionsOverall: 15 3/4 inches (40.01 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust through the George H. and Elizabeth O. Davis Fund

Object number90-5

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

African Art

Terms

Exhibition History

Fired Brilliance: Ceramic Vessels from Zaire, The University of Missouri-Kansas City Gallery of Art, Kansas City, MO, February 11-March 16, 1990, no. 7.

Gallery Label

This anthropomorphic vessel was created by the renowned Woyo potter Voania, who was chief of the village of Muba. Chief Voania, who described himself as self-taught, worked in a region with no known ceramic tradition. He was a prolific artist, producing large numbers of naturalistic, figurative pots that were sold to European travelers and officials at regional trading centers along the Zaire River. In this example we see that Chief Voania adopted the European convention of signing his pots, and his signature, inscribed as "Voania Muba," is visible on the front of this pot.

Provenance

Alain Guisson (1951-2019), Brussels, Belgium [1];

Purchased from Guisson by Marc Leo Félix (Tribal Arts SPRL), Brussels, Belgium, no. 7, by March 1990;

Purchased from Félix by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1990.

NOTES:

[1] According to Marc Leo Félix, in email correspondence with MacKenzie Mallon, February 13, 2023, NAMA curatorial files.

Published References

Fired Brilliance: Ceramic Vessels from Zaire, exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: The University of Missouri-Kansas City Gallery of Art, 1990, unpaginated, (repro.).

Robert T. Soppelsa, “Fired Brilliance: Ceramic Vessels from Zaire,” exh. review, African Arts 23, no. 3 (July 1990), 82.

Newsletter (The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, December 1990): 2, (repro.).

Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 251, (repro.).

Catherine Futter et al., Ceramics: Highlights of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2016), 49, (repro.).

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