Carving (c. 1900): Art, History and Details

Carving (c. 1900) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Carved elephant ivory tusks and hippopotamus tooth ivory—whether large, or small, like this example—were sought-after souvenirs for Europeans who visited, lived, or worked on the coast of Central Africa. Vili carvers had been sculpting ivory for centuries. In the age of European commerce and colonialism, they created carefully observed tusks with representations of everyday life for European clients. While commissions, they also reflected what the artists chose to represent about their own societies, and sometimes about Europeans. In this small tusk, we see Congolese individuals wearing various clothing, from local-style waist wrappers to European brimmed hats.

Object facts

• Title: Carving
• Date: c. 1900
• Culture: Central Africa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kongo, early 20th century
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: ivory
• Dimensions: Overall: 17.8 cm (7 in.)
• Collection: African Art
• Department: African Art
• Accession number: 1969.138

A detail from the museum

The spiral composition of this artwork has been used on carved ivories in the Kingdom of Kongo since the 1500s.

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. Charles E. Roseman

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.