Lot 230 Dα

Stools in Afrika signify the authority of their owners and tell us much about the social, cultural, political and aesthetic values of a society. The addition of an elaborate high back transforms this stool into a throne. Such high-backed stools are found amongst various peoples in Africa, such as the Kom of Cameroon and the Chokwe of Angola, but they are most prevalent amongst the peoples of East Afrika, from Ethiopia to South Afrika (see Nancy Ingram Nooter, "East African High-Backed Stools a Transcultural Tradition" in "From Ritual to Modern Art: Tradition and Modernity in Tanzania Sculpture", Dar es Salaam, 2001, p.61).

The attribution of many early East African stools in European museums is problematic as a result of the area's turbulent history due to migrations and caravan trading routes. A number of stools collected at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries in the former German East Africa and are to be found today mostly in German and Austrian museums. Perhaps the most famous is the Nyamwezi stool in the Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin collected by Lt. von Grawert in 1898 from the Sultanate (or chiefdom) of Buruku in Eastern Nyamweziland where it had been the property of the Sultana (or chief's consort).

Such high-baked stools from East Africa were sometimes used in pairs, one for the chief and one for his consort, and generally display male and female attributes (see Nancy Nooter, op.cit. p.66). However most surviving high-backed stools from the Liguru are female, as is the case with the present lot, perhaps reflecting the matrilineality of the Liguru people but possibly, as is the case among the patrilineal Luba, as a reflection of the belief that the spirits respond more favourably to women; hence most Luba sculptures are female. The characteristic features of Liguru stools are the sagittal crest to the head, facial scarification, small protruding ears, small breasts, geometric patterns to the backs and tripartite bases.

A high-backed stool similar to the present lot, now in the National Museum of African Art, Washington, D.C., was formerly attributed to the Hehe but has now been redefined as Liguru. It was collected in the town of Dodoma by a Belgian military officer stationed in Tabora immediately after World War I, when Belgian and British troops occupied the former German colony.