Bow Stand (1800s): Art, History and Details

Bow Stand (1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

A powerful symbol of the Luba king, bow stands were ceremonial objects that resided within the king’s private vicinity in the palace and were never displayed in public. Typically, bow stands depict a female figure, but the sculptor has carved a figure with ambiguously gendered human traits. This is a symbolic depiction that may allude to how divine rulers (mulopwe) were believed to have both “male” and “female” character traits, which allowed this sculpture to act as a vessel for spirits of any gender.

Object facts

• Title: Bow Stand
• Date: 1800s
• Culture: Africa, Central Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Luba-style carver
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: Wood and plant fiber
• Dimensions: without base: 57.9 x 23 x 10 cm (22 13/16 x 9 1/16 x 3 15/16 in.)
• Collection: African Art
• Department: African Art
• Accession number: 2018.27

A detail from the museum

The shape of this wooden bow stand is based on a more practical version in metal used by hunters.

Collection credit

Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Debbaut, Jan, Dominique Favart, and G. van Geertruyen. Utotombo: l'art d'Afrique noire dans les collections privées belges : Société des Expositions du Palais des Beaux-Arts, Bruxelles, 25 mars-5 juin 1988. Bruxelles: Palais des beaux-arts, 1988.
• Neyt, François. Luba: to the sources of the Zaire. Paris: Musée Dapper, 1994.
• Volper, Julien “Étude Iconologique d’un Porte-Flèche Masculin,” Afrique: Archéologie & Arts, 4 (2006).

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.