Lot Essay
Just as men in Western society enjoy the clannishness of a club, so the men of the Kuba federation formed clubs at which they would drink the favourite beverage of western Africa - palm wine tapped from raphia vinifera. The wooden cups from which they drank were carved in a variety of forms, but none more orignal and engaging than those produced by a Wongo carver working during the last century, which are fashioned as jaunty figures, standing on short legs set apart, arms akimbo, the head and body providing a waisted cup of double spherical form.
Torday collected three vessels by this hand on his expedition of 1907-09, two carved as male figures and the third as a female. The last, now in the British Museum, is photographed by Elisofon from both back and the front (Elisofon and Fagg, 1958, p. 208, fig. 264). For the male figure in the British Museum see Torday and Joyce, 1910, p.200, fig.e - fig.f illustrates the female: the other male is in the Ethnographisches Museum, Budapest (Bodrogi, 1967, fig. 163). A third male cup is in the Kjersmeier Collection, Copenhagen (Kjersmeier, 1947, p.68). Another female cup was purchased by the Berlin Museum from Frobenius in 1904 (Krieger, 1965, p.63, no.196, fig.205) and a third female, with the left hand raised to the chin, is in the Buffalo Museum of Science (Robbins and Nooter, 1989, p.431, fig.1111). Vansina (1992, p.319, fig.143) writes of the Berlin example This cup represents a woman of rank wearing jewelry on her arms and abundantly scarified. ... ...Any Kuba sees immediately that the patterns shown on the torso and abdomen are ambiguous. They are part of those that appear on women's bodies among the central Kuba, but untypical of that style. The patterns also belong to the style used for decorating wooden objects. The ambiguity points to a visual pun, reminiscent of Magritte: "This object is not a woman, it is a cup." The Kuba delighted in visual puns and double entendre.
The present owner of this cup remembers, in the late 1960s, admiring the British Museum example, and asking the dealer Hannes Schmitt to let him know if he ever found one like it. Hannes must have known of the existence of the present example, which was part of lot 3 of the Epstein Collection sold at Christie's on 15 December 1961, acquired by the artist, Gunther Bloch
Torday collected three vessels by this hand on his expedition of 1907-09, two carved as male figures and the third as a female. The last, now in the British Museum, is photographed by Elisofon from both back and the front (Elisofon and Fagg, 1958, p. 208, fig. 264). For the male figure in the British Museum see Torday and Joyce, 1910, p.200, fig.e - fig.f illustrates the female: the other male is in the Ethnographisches Museum, Budapest (Bodrogi, 1967, fig. 163). A third male cup is in the Kjersmeier Collection, Copenhagen (Kjersmeier, 1947, p.68). Another female cup was purchased by the Berlin Museum from Frobenius in 1904 (Krieger, 1965, p.63, no.196, fig.205) and a third female, with the left hand raised to the chin, is in the Buffalo Museum of Science (Robbins and Nooter, 1989, p.431, fig.1111). Vansina (1992, p.319, fig.143) writes of the Berlin example This cup represents a woman of rank wearing jewelry on her arms and abundantly scarified. ... ...Any Kuba sees immediately that the patterns shown on the torso and abdomen are ambiguous. They are part of those that appear on women's bodies among the central Kuba, but untypical of that style. The patterns also belong to the style used for decorating wooden objects. The ambiguity points to a visual pun, reminiscent of Magritte: "This object is not a woman, it is a cup." The Kuba delighted in visual puns and double entendre.
The present owner of this cup remembers, in the late 1960s, admiring the British Museum example, and asking the dealer Hannes Schmitt to let him know if he ever found one like it. Hannes must have known of the existence of the present example, which was part of lot 3 of the Epstein Collection sold at Christie's on 15 December 1961, acquired by the artist, Gunther Bloch