Female Bowl-Bearing Figure (late 1800s-early 1900s): Art, History and Details

Female Bowl-Bearing Figure (late 1800s-early 1900s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

In Luba-style art, an object's beauty affects how well it works. While bowl-bearing figures had many possible uses, a royal diviner likely used this well-carved image of a woman carrying a bowl in rituals. Dusty traces of mpemba (white chalk) fleck the shining exterior and the bowl's interior, showing it once held this sacred powder. Diamond-shaped scarification marks at her waist, chest, and back add to her beauty. Her hair is carved into the cascading layered hairstyle worn in the Luba region at the turn of the twentieth century. Strands of imported glass beads encircle her waist and neck, and dangle from her hair. The alternating white and blue beads may symbolize the moon and Mbidi Kiluwe, a culture hero linked to royal practice and smithing. While much Luba-style art depicts women—who are societally important—men created and owned the majority of such works.

Object facts

• Title: Female Bowl-Bearing Figure
• Date: late 1800s-early 1900s
• Culture: Africa, Central Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Luba-style carver
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: Wood, glass beads, upholstery studs, plant fiber, and iron
• Dimensions: Overall: 40.8 x 16.1 x 27.3 cm (16 1/16 x 6 5/16 x 10 3/4 in.)
• Collection: African Art
• Department: African Art
• Accession number: 2010.454

A detail from the museum

Symbolic of anvils, the round metal tacks decorating the figure's hair "pin" spirits and their secrets within it. They are at the hairline and each of the four hair cascades (the bottommost is now gone).

Collection credit

René and Odette Delenne Collection, Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Tentoonstelling van Kongo-kunst, exh. cat., Stadsfeestzaal, Antwerpen (December 24, 1937-January 16, 1938). Antwerp: Antwerpsche Propagandaweken, 1937 [cat. 669; not illustrated]
• Antwerpen, Stad Stedelijke Feestzaal, and Antwerpsche Propagandaweken. Tentoonstelling van Kongo-Kunst, cat. 669. Exh. Cat. Antwerp: Antwerpsche Propagandaweken, December 24, 1937-January 16, 1938.
• Olbrechts, Frans M. Plastiek van Kongo. Antwerp/Brussels/Ghent/Leuven: Standaards-Boekhandel, 1946.

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.