Author Archives: africanart

No Limit Exclusive African Art Auction. GREAT news for you here 🙂 Dear friend, Since my auction ( that is ending in a few hours) is doing so well I’m mailing you a valuable gift inside each package as part of what might be the most ridiculously generous surprise ever. Maybe you’ll get a book, or a complementary object, only the winners will know. Seldom HOLO NZAMBI frame- D.R.Congo From the 1940’s – Good condition. Collection Gaetan Schoonbroodt Auctioneer’s estimate:  €2,500 – €5,000 Actual price: 350 € Rare and Seldom Holo Nzambi frame from the nzo santu house- D.R.C. Congo. Sold with a custom made stand. NO PRICE LIMIT. FREE DELIVERY. Height: 32 cm and thin 0.5cm to 2 cm, and large 15 cm. Condition: Dry patina, Brown patina. Custom made stand included. Origin: The HOLO NZAMBI frame comes from the Holo tribe, Congo near Angola and around the Lake Tanganika. Provenance: Gaetan Schoonbroodt, Verviers, Belgium. Typical for the Holo those figures in frame reminds of the Christ figure, and serve as lucky charm decoration in the house and the owner consult it for advice. (Neyt, 1982). Compare withe one sold at Christies in 2013 that sold for 8125€ : http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/Lot/cadre-holo-nzambiholo-frame-nzambi-sud-ouest-de-5745862-details.aspx See more pictures of the HOLO NZAMBI   Okak society Shoulder mask End XIXth-Early XXth – Good condition. Provenance: Collection of Maria Wyss. Basel, Switzerland. FANG OKAK – Equatorial Guinea – border Gabon. End XIXth-Early XXth – Good condition. Provenance: Collection of Maria Wyss. Basel, Switzerland. Auctioneer’s estimate:  €750 – €1,250 Actual price: 495 € Protective Fang peoples Okak group mask. XIXth century Equatorial Guinea (at the border with Gabon), Africa. Height =23 cm. This figure is sold with a custom made metal stand Height on stand =32 cm Fine patina with clear signs of use, and with remains of a magical charge around the neck. This is a protective mask that was used during the hunting season. There are similar objects in e.g. the National Museum of Anthropology, Madrid. PROVENANCE: Collection of Maria Wyss. Basel, Switzerland. She was active in the 1960/1970 in Basel, Switzerland and well known in the […]

The Private Collections Hunt Newsletter Dear friends, This month we have news of an interesting auction, the hunt for a Djenne head, a video of a very special Kwele mask, and much else besides! David —————–AUCTION——————– Coming onto the market: a private Belgian collection. This month I bring you news of a notable Belgian collector, who has been collecting for over 50 years both in Belgium and further afield. Most of his pieces come from small colonial collectors, and some even come from the renowned Lepage collection. He has supplied numerous dealers and museums – a full listing of the 70+ pieces thus provided is available on the Guy van Rijn Yale database. He has decided to request my assistance to help him sell part of his collection through Catawiki. This is a unique occasion for you to get a well-provenanced, genuine object at a very low starting price. A photographer has been conscripted to take accurate, clear photos of the pieces from all angles, highlighting textural variability, cracks and restorations (where applicable). This way you can be sure that what you see is precisely what you get. The name of the collector will be given to all buyers in the accompanying documentation included in every package. The following lots have been put up for this auction ( + reserve price) : – Lot 1:  Kakuungu Mask – YAKA – D.R. Congo € 1300 – Lot 2:  2 beaded Yaka hats – YAKA – D.R. Congo  €650 – Lot 3:  A fine stool – MONGO – D.R. Congo €350 –Lot 4:  Oshe Shango with Double face – YORUBA -Nigeria € 150 – Lot 5:  Cup – KUBA – D.R. Congo € 250 – Lot 6:  Oozing neckrest- Sidama- Ethiopia € 150 – Lot 7:  A small stool – TSCHOKWE – D.R. Congo € 350 – Lot 8:  Cariatide stool with 5 complete figures – KUBA – D.R. Congo  €750 – Lot 9:  A little figure – TEKE TEGE – D.R. Congo  €250 – Lot 10:  Little Pwo mask -TCHOKWE – D.R. Congo € 600 – Lot 11:  Seldom Black Kasai […]

Dear $email, Just unpacking W.D. Webster Illustrated Catalogue of Ethnographical Specimens 18 – 31 Edited by Julien .G.B. Leen . “W.D. Webster Illustrated Catalogue of Ethnographical Specimens 18 – 31” by W. D. Webster https://goo.gl/it0TVp USE Coupon code 83JPCV78 William Downing Webster (1868 – 1913) was a British ethnographic dealer and collector. In 1895 he began to issue illustrated ethnographic catalogues, 17 with illustrations, 14 with photographs. The 14 catalogues with photographs have been colour corrected, cleaned and bundled in this publication. This edition includes indexes for object type and region that can be cross-referenced to find specific items. This makes it an invaluable resource for academics, researchers and collectors Webster was born in 1868 in Greenwich to Robert and Sarah Webster. Although his father was in the potato trade, Webster was initially employed as a stained glass designer in Lancaster before becoming a dealer in ethnographic antiquities in the 1890s. In 1891 he married Agnes Harrison in Kendal. He published a series of catalogues detailing his collection during the next two decades, and staged a number of exhibitions of ethnographic material at Earl’s Court. In 1899 he traveled throughout Britain purchasing material from British soldiers returning from the Benin Expedition, amassing a large quantity of material that was carefully recorded in his catalogues. In 1904 his marriage broke up and he separated from his wife and two daughters and lived with his housekeeper, Eva Cutter. His collection was sold in a London-based auction that took place over five days. He died from alcoholism in Effingham in 1913, and is reportedly buried at Kensal Green Cemetery. Julien Leen is a Dutch collector, who is less a specialist of Webster than particularly preoccupied with trustworthy reference material Of course everyone knows the Oldman catalog and collection; it contains some excellent material! I think that Kevin Conru recently wrote a very nice book about it. It was while reading the book “Provenance: Twelve Collectors of Ethnographic Art in England 1760-1990” by Hermione Waterfield that he discovered that Oldman wasn’t the only one who published sales catalogues in the Kate XIXth and early […]

The Best Movie About African Art is still today “Les Statues Meurent Aussi” Dear friends, If you haven’t seen it yet the movie “Les Statues Meurent Aussi” from 1953 was directed by Alain Resnais & Chris Marker, banned in France for fifteen years. Here is how it begins, the words spoken over darkness: “When men die, they enter history. When statues die, they enter art. This botany of death is what we call culture.” And then, as if to prove his point, the film’s image lights up to show us the ruins of a few outdoor sculptures, speckled with sunlight and wizened by age and corrosion—strange botanical specimens. What follows, over a striking montage of indoor specimens and some of their strolling museum spectators (first white ones, then a single black woman), is a kind of existential poetics of both art and history: “An object dies when the living glance trained upon it disappears. And when we disappear, our objects will be confined to the place where we send black things: to the museum.” Alain Resnais’s Eisensteinian editing meanwhile peaks as an accelerating succession of graphic images reaches a gorgeous crescendo and epiphany in a cut to the head of an African swimmer rising from underwater to the surface of a river. […] This gradually turns into a remarkable duet between Marker’s literary fervor and a detailed as well as despairing political vision—a combination of speculative art history, precise journalism, and a grim meditation on the various places and functions Africa and its separate cultures have assumed within white civilization—and Resnais’s musically and rhythmically orchestrated illustration of and counterpoint to this extraordinary text. Both of these strains can be said to embody, empower, and enhance as well as accompany the other, but it would be pointless to try to synopsize either Marker’s multifaceted argument or Resnais’s elaborately composed and articulated assembly of images, much less attempt to describe how effectively they complement one another. It appears that this film took years to put together, but it moves with a fluency and directness that is never labored. To read more about […]