Pipe bowl (early to mid-1900s): Art, History and Details

Pipe bowl (early to mid-1900s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Tobacco smoking had important social connotations in Central Africa, denoting age, status, and gender. Perhaps the enlarged hand expressed physical and spiritual powers and indicates that this work belonged to a chief. Figuratively carved pipes and snuff mortars constitute important genres of Luluwa decorative arts. As personal objects reflecting the prominence and success of their male and sometimes female owners, they are usually the creative work of virtuoso artists and take a variety of often imaginative shapes.

Object facts

• Title: Pipe bowl
• Date: early to mid-1900s
• Culture: Africa, Central Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Luluwa or Luntu maker
• Type: Tools and Equipment
• Technique: Wood, iron, and copper alloy
• Dimensions: Overall: 6 x 7.4 x 24 cm (2 3/8 x 2 15/16 x 9 7/16 in.)
• Collection: African Art
• Department: African Art
• Accession number: 2008.152

A detail from the museum

The cavity for the tobacco is positioned in the belly of a figure who holds himself up with bent arms on the pipe.

Collection credit

Jo Hershey Selden Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Gérard Berjonneau & Jean-Louis Sonnery, eds. Rediscovered Masterpieces of African Art (Boulogne: ARTS 135/Paris: Fondation Dapper, 1987), fig. 292.
• Cleveland Museum of Art. The CMA Companion: A Guide to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2014.
• Petridis, Constantijn. Luluwa: Central African Art between Heaven and Earth. 2018, 169.

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.