Prestige Chair (1800s): Art, History and Details

Prestige Chair (1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This stately chair attributed to the Babanki peoples of the Cameroon Grassfields features an unusual configuration of male and female figures. They are mounted on stylized leopards, animals revered as embodiments of power and royalty, which stand atop a base of three undulating rings bearing 24 heads. Chairs like this one serve as visual records that help mark kingships through the ages, conveying power and authority. The chair type was relatively common at the time; they were carved for sale to Europeans and local patrons, and also used as articles of royal gift exchange.

Object facts

• Title: Prestige Chair
• Date: 1800s
• Culture: Africa, Central Africa, Cameroon, Babanki-style maker
• Type: Furniture and woodwork
• Technique: Wood and paint
• Dimensions: Overall: 80.7 x 53.3 x 44.5 cm (31 3/4 x 21 x 17 1/2 in.)
• Collection: African Art
• Department: African Art
• Accession number: 1983.33

A detail from the museum

A British soldier acquired this work in Cameroon during the First World War.

Collection credit

Gift in memory of his parents, Wheeler B. and Dorothy Preston by Mary and John Preston

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “Year in Review for 1983.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 71, no. 2 (February 1984): 38–79.
• Nzewi, Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Second Careers : Two Tributaries in African Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2019
• Nzewi, Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Second Careers : Two Tributaries in African Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2019

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.