African Wood Carvings

A Baya wood sculpture of a wise man, from the Bambara people of Mali. Our Art Fair purchase last week.

We bought our new sculpture from Ibrahim, a dealer in African art.
Over the years, we have bought a number of masks from him.
He is not part of the "official" art fair, but just a sidewalk vendor.

Our sculpture as Ibrahim displayed it. Sitting in the gutter? OK.
Our wise man is more respected on the mantle above our fireplace.

In 2009, I took this photo at Ibrahim's art fair sale. The sculpture is very similar
to the one I bought this year, but obviously not the same one. The hands on
the two statues are mirror images, for one thing. And the eyes are different.

African mask of Elvis. Mid-20th century.

I wanted to include this very interesting mask from the Chewa people of Malawi which we saw on Saturday in the Detroit Institute of Arts. Elvis's image was a tool to warn young people about undesirable Western values that Elvis and others represented to their culture. "Members of the Nyau, a secret society among the Chewa, wore this mask with an iconic image of the King of Rock and Roll during ceremonies and rituals." (Information from museum label.)

For more posts on African masks in my collection and ones that I've seen in museums, you can go to this link at my travel blog: http://maetravels.blogspot.com/search/label/African%20Masks or to the African Masks link at the bottom of this post.

All photos copyright 2019 by Mae & Len Sander. This blog post was created by Mae for maefood dot blogspot dot com. If you read it elsewhere, it's been stolen.