Pipe
CultureBamum Kingdom
Date20th century
MediumFired clay, wood, and metal
DimensionsOverall: 22 1/2 × 5 1/4 × 6 1/4 inches (57.15 × 13.34 × 15.88 cm)
Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust through the George H. and Elizabeth O. Davis Fund
Object number94-29
On View
On viewGallery Location
- L9
Collections
DescriptionClay pipe bowl inthe form of a human head with elaborate coiffure consisting of frog motifs. stem of the pipe is carved with open- work spider motifs. from a copper tube.Gallery LabelIn western Cameroon's Grasslands kingdoms, leadership is exercised by divine kings and titled nobility. Royal thrones, drinking horns and prestige pipes, such as this example, express the spiritual basis of political authority. The spider imagery along this pipe's stem is a reference to the Grasslands practice of earth-spider divination. Spider imagery attests to the pipe owner's wisdom, leadership and capacity to communicate with the ancestral dead who, like the spider, reside deep inside the earth. Frogs encircling the pipe bowl symbolize fertility and the abundance brought by ideal leadership.
With Merton Simpson Gallery, New York [1];
With Donald Morris Gallery, Birmingham, MI, by February 1994;
Purchased from Donald Morris Gallery by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1994.
NOTES:
[1] According to Donald Morris Gallery, in documentation provided at the time of the object’s purchase, NAMA curatorial files.
Newsletter (The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, November 1995): 2, (repro.).
Joyce M. Youmans, “African Art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art,” African Arts 33, no. 4 (Winter 2000), 49, 54-55, (repro.).
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