Lidded Container
Northern Nguni
1850–1900
- Medium
- Wood
- Dimensions
- overall: 48.3 × 25.4 × 25.4 cm (19 × 10 × 10 in.)
- Genre
- container
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago
Styles
Tags
woodstoragenguniEastern and Southern Africacontainerceremonywood (plant material)african Artarts of Africacarvingsouth africanprestigecontainers
About
The use of this container with its graceful ovoid form and incised linear pattern is unclear. It may have served as a prestige object for a high-ranking member of society—for instance, providing a place to store tobacco in honor of guests and ancestors on festive and ritual occasions. Recent scholarship suggests that it may have been made explicitly for sale to a foreign client, tourist, or resident.
