Prestige Headdress (Ashetu or shüötu) (1900–1950): Art, History and Details
Prestige Headdress (Ashetu or shüötu) at the Cleveland Museum of Art: 1900–1950, cotton, dye (including indigo). Explore the work's context, creator attribution and collection history.
Prestige Headdress (Ashetu or shüötu) (1900–1950) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.
The work and its context
The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:
The bristle-like surface of this man’s prestige headdress is dyed with indigo or a red pigment. Below, a diamond pattern evokes another royal symbol, the leopard. The projections are reinforced with small pieces of wood. Such extensions are seen on prestige headgear represented in wood in sculptures and in colored pencil on drawings in the collection.
Object facts
- Title: Prestige Headdress (Ashetu or shüötu)
- Date: 1900–1950
- Culture: Bamum style, unknown maker, Grassfields region, Cameroon
- Type: Textile
- Technique: cotton, dye (including indigo)
- Dimensions: Overall: 25.4 x 25.6 cm (10 x 10 1/16 in.)
- Collection: African Art
- Department: African Art
- Accession number: 2024.70
A detail from the museum
Titled men still wear such prestigious adornment today.
Collection credit
Alma Kroeger Fund
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.
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