Column to volume: Formal innovation in Chamba statuary | 9781872843476 PB
- Details
- Parent Category: Saffron Catalogue
- Category: Saffron Afriscopes Series
The first volume in Saffron Afriscopes series, this book investigates the appearance on world art markets during the 1970s of statues identified as Chamba from West Africa. Sought after for their artful execution, these statues were stylistically unlike anything previously documented from the region. Are they what the art market claimed? Who made them, when, where and why?
About Column to volume
Column to volume: Formal innovation in Chamba statuary investigates the appearance on world art markets during the 1970s of statues identified as Chamba from West Africa. Sought after for their artful execution, these statues were stylistically unlike anything previously documented from the region. Are they what the art market claimed? Who made them, when, where and why?
To answer these questions Richard Fardon and Christine Stelzig had to combine the findings of ethnographic research in Cameroon and Nigeria with museum and archival research and the testimonies of art dealers and collectors.
Profusely illustrated, Column to volume offers a comprehensive account of an important sculptural tradition in West Africa, as well as fascinating insights into the tribal branding, distribution, and copying, of African art works during the 1970s.
Identifying formal innovation in what had been described as a ‘tribal’ tradition, not least by tracing the individual sculptor responsible for the most valued Chamba statues, this account by Fardon and Stelzig will transform readers’ appreciation of Chamba sculpture.
More than this, their collaboration provides an instructive example of a fresh kind of inter-disciplinary and multi-sited investigation that integrates local contexts of use, collection histories, art markets and formal artistic appreciation to reflect the local and global contexts through which African artefacts circulated during the 20th century.
Readership level: General to Professional to Postgraduate
Additional product information
| Published | London: 2005 |
| Published by | Saffron Books [EAP London] |
| Edition | First Edition |
| ISBN-13 | 9781872843476 |
| ISBN-10 | 1872843476 |
| Number of pages | 160 |
| Illustrations, Colour & B&W | 90 |
| Spine [mm] | 12 |
| Shipping Weight [grams] | 852 |
| Distributed by | Saffron Distribution |
| Size | 287mm(h)x210mm |
About the Authors
Richard Fardon, professor of anthropology in the University of London, teaches West African ethnography and anthropological theory at the School of Oriental and African Studies. He was for eight years Chairman of the University of London’s Centre of African Studies and is currently editor of the journal AFRICA. His next book in the Afriscopes Series, Fusions, is also available from this website and online store. Together with Graham Furniss and Francis Nyamnjoh, he is series editor of Saffron Afriscopes Series.
Before attending the University of Leipzig where she received her doctorate, Christine Stelzig studied cultural anthropology and African history in Munich and Paris. She worked as an assistant for ethnographic museums in Munich, Paris and Berlin, and currently is active as an independent curator of African Art exhibitions. Dr Stelzig is the author of journal articles on African art, histories of collection and historical photographs. Her recent book, in German, is entitled Africa in the Berlin Museum of Ethnography 1873-1919. Acquisition, representation and construction of a continent.
Fusions: Masquerades and thought style east of the Niger-Benue confluence, West Africa | 9781872843605
- Details
- Parent Category: Saffron Catalogue
- Category: Saffron Afriscopes Series
About Fusions
Fusions takes the masks of West Africa's Upper Benue River region out of the museums and private collections, where many accumulated in the twentieth century, and restores their cultural and social contexts. The book argues that Benue masquerades deserve appreciation as the materialized forms taken by the thought styles of their original creators and users. Masquerades are 'theranthropic': they fuse characteristics of animals with those of living and dead human beings to create entities to perform the powers and dangers inherent in people's lives.
The subtle variety of the ways that different masquerades, and other performances, achieve this, reveals facets of an understanding of the human condition: of relations between the genders, the living and the dead, animals and people, kings and commoners .... By demonstrating the similarities in both their conceptions and uses, Fusions will change the way readers look at, and understand, the masquerades of the entire Benue River.
About the Author
Richard Fardon began research in Cameroon and Nigeria in the mid-1970s. Since 1988, he has taught anthropological theory and the ethnography of West Africa at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). Author or editor of numerous books on anthropology generally and West Africa in particular: his most recent publications include a companion volume to this, Column to Volume: formal innovation in Chamba statuary (with Christine Stelzig, Saffron Afriscopes Series, 2005), and Lela in Bali: history through ceremony in Cameroon (Berghahn/Cameroon Studies, 2006). He was Chairman of the University of London’s Centre of African Studies for eight years, and he has been editor of AFRICA, the Journal of the International African Institute, since 2001. Together with Graham Furniss and Francis Nyamnjoh, he is series editor of Saffron Afriscopes Series.
Additional product information
| Published | London: 2007 |
| Published by | Saffron Books [EAP London] |
| Edition | First Edition |
| ISBN-13 | 9781872843605 |
| ISBN-10 | 1872843603 |
| ISSN | 1748-6262 | Saffron Afriscopes Series |
| Binding | Hard Cover, no Jacket |
| Number of pages | 208 |
| Illustrations, Colour & B&W | 88 |
| Spine [mm] | 22 |
| Shipping Weight [grams] | 1,300 |
| Distributed by | Saffron Distribution |
| Size | 305mm(h)x218mm |
Contents [Download original pages, click here]
- Afriscopes – the series;
- Acknowledgements;
- List of illustrations
- 1 | Introduction — Posing the problem – fusion masquerades and the materialisation of thought style; Comparison, materiality, method; The formal distribution of horizontal masks
PART ONE | CHAMBA MASQUERADE
- 2 | The ethnographer’s account – a singular fusion
- 3 | Accenting the masquerade – template and variety; Chamba masquerade: template; Chamba masquerade: early colonial documentation (1903-21); The German colonial period before the Frobenius expedition; Leo Frobenius’s Chamba expedition (1911-12); Lilley’s collection un der British administration (1921); Variety in Chamba masks summarised; Post-colonial acquisitions and the composition of the Chamba collection; Conclusion
PART TWO | WESTWARD – FUSION MASQUERADES
- 4 | Mumuye masquerade – fusion refracted by gender;
- 5 | Jukunoid masquerades – fusion refracted by gender and animality; Aku-ma – myth and form; Other Jukun masquerades; Aku and aku-ma in performance; Around the edges of the Jukun; Goemai – aku appropriated; Kuteb and Yukuben – animal-human dimorphism revised; Conclusion – formal variation in Jukunoid masks;
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6 | On the margins of comparison Northward – bovid referents diversified; Southward – animal referents multiplied Mambila; Wuli (with notes on Wawa and Yamba); Dii; Toward the Grassfields – the pitfalls of formal comparison
PART THREE | EASTWARD – FUSION WITHOUT MASQUERADES - 7 | Two types of absence – Pere and Koma; Pere – coevals without masquerade; Koma – masquerade inverted; Conclusion;
- 8 | Death and fusion – Dowayo;
- 9 | Conclusion | Bovine theranthropic fusion materialised – a regional thought style
- Appendix | Table: Chamba masks in collections
- Bibliography | Published sources; Unpublished sources;
- Index
ERRATA [IMPORTANT POST-PUBLICATION INFO FOR READERS]
The Chamba masks in Figure 3a i, Figure 3a ii, Figure 3a iii, Figure 3b, Figure 3d i, Figure 3d ii, Figure 3h, and Figure 3o ii have been reversed in printing. Because undamaged Chamba masks are symmetrical laterally, this will not be apparent immediately, However, this error has the effect that written descriptions of damage, and of bipartite colouring, do not tally with the photographic evidence. Apologies are offered for this error both to readers and to copyright holders.
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• Series Editors' Note (pdf.66k)
• Table of Contents (pdf, 114k)
• Richard Fardon's Preface (pdf, 89k)
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Second in the Afriscopes Series
Fusions: Masquerades and thought style east of the Niger-Benue confluence, West Africa | Richard Fardon
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• Fusions Contents | View pdf
• Fusions Images | View pdf page spread 1 | View pdf page spread 2 | View pdf page spread 3 |
• Fusions map | View map
• Richard Fardon's introduction | Read opening paragraphs
• View Fusions Index
