An Ekoi Headdress Lot n° 45

Headpiece Ekoi, Ibibio-Efik, Nigeria / Cross River mit Sockel / with base Wood, rattan, leather. H 64 cm. Provenance: - Mace A. (1928-2022) & Helen Neufeld (1931-1995), Beverly Hills. - Sotheby's New York, 11/14-1990. - Sandro Bocola (1931-2022), Zurich. Beide seitlichen Frisur-Hörner wurden abgeschennt und sind unauffindbar / Both side hairstyle horns have been separated and are missing. Described at Sotheby's (NY, 11/14/19/90, lot 108) as follows: An Ekoi Wood and Hide Dance Crest, of oval form resting on a cylindrical neck, with lower lip jutting slightly forward and baring small teeth (some miss-ing), painted eyes beneath an elaborate coiffure with two ribbed plaits emerging from the sides of the head and curling under, another resting on the crown and curling under, and a fourth arcing from the back of the head to the nape; the whole covered in blackened hide with wooden mouth bearing traces of red and white pigment, the eyes with white and black pigment. Height 23⅝ in. (60 cm.) $6,000-9,000 --------------------------------------------------------------- Sandro Bocola became interested in African art at a young age. With the purchase of a first Ekoi mask he began to collect artifacts of this tribe. He wrote the following text about the Ekoi, which was self-published on his 90th birthday: The skin-covered masks from the Cross River region of Nigeria and Cameroon are unique in that their design concept and its technique are not known in any other part of the world. It is believed to have spread from the Ekoi people, who number about 200,000 souls, to the other Cross River tribes linguistically related to it (the Widekum, Egjaham, Bi-fanka, and Anang), each of these tribes creating its own type of mask. There has been much speculation about the origin of this practice, but there are some clues. The Ekoi not only supplied European clients operating in the port city of Old Calibar as slave traders, but were also head hunters who originally considered and displayed their captured human heads as trophies. Amaury Talbot, an eclectic British civil servant and anthropologist who made several trips to study the Ekoi, reports in his famous book In the Shadow of the Bush, published in 1912, how the natives performed a war dance in his honor, parading the bleeding heads of their enemies, just cut off and spiked on poles. Several museums also feature masks with the skulls of decapitated enemies covered with skin (see the specimen on display). Since this practice was banned by the colonial powers, wood-carved headdresses covered with antelope skin were used as dance masks. However, in rare cases, these were also covered with human skin. A corresponding specimen is in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. The wide spectrum of these works is astonishing. In addition to heads of humans and those that combined human and animal features, skeletons of crocodiles or other animals were also covered with skin. The aesthetics and naturalistic design of these heads caused such a sensation that the Ekoi created a corresponding mask type, also naturalistic but general, which they sold in many variations to the European traders, explorers and travelers of Old Calibar. The famous specimen of this type in the Musee de l'Homme conformed to Le Corbusier's design ideals, while the surreal, frightening, and disturbing Ekoi masks probably did not interest him. Highly unusual is another custom of the Ekoi, after the death of important tribesmen, to make their portrait as a naturalistically carved, skin-covered head with the hair of the deceased and to use it as a mask attachment at dances. CHF 2 000 / 4 000 EUR 2 000 / 4 000