Rare LUBA Bowl Bearer
Style of the Master of Buli
Old and atypical bowl bearer made in the style of the Master of Buli
Atypical first because the bowl is strongly inclined, which is only very rarely found.
There is one which is kept at the AfricaMuseum in Tervuren and which is illustrated in "Kabila- en Grafbeelden uit Kongo - Annales du Musée du Congo belge" by J. Maes in 1938: plate 23, figure 7 (picture on demand)
Atypical also because she has a very small breast, like a man's
The famous “Bowl bearers” of the Luba are sacralized sculptures, representing a seated, kneeling (or much more rarely standing) woman holding with her two hands (or more rarely on the head) a container. Used by the Bilumbu, the soothsayers, they are the passage, the intermediary, between them and the spirit world. The woman represented (formerly commonly called Kabila) is a clairvoyant holding the Mboko, calabash containing the divination material ...
She is supposed to accompany the soothsayer when it enters into trances
The Luba are a great people in eastern DRC.
Their caryatid seats, their cup holders, chiefs' sticks, arrow holders, adzes and ancestral statues are very famous and among the most valued objects in African Art.
Characteristics:
TYPE OF OBJECT: Bowl bearer, Statue, figure
ETHNICAL GROUP: Luba Baluba
ORIGINE: Congo Drc
MATERIAL: Wood
DIMENSIONS: About 15 inches high
CONDITION: Medium
Please have a look on the pictures
ESTIMATED AGE: first half of the 20th century