H x W x D: 16.1 x 35 x 1.2 cm (6 5/16 x 13 3/4 x 1/2 in.)
Type:
Sculpture
Geography:
Kenya
Date:
Late 20th century
Label Text:
In 1969, Peter Nzuki went from being a carver for the tourist trade to being a collector for the National Museum of Kenya. This spurred his interest in the variety of designs and traditional objects of his country beyond his own Kamba heritage. In 1972, a staff anthropologist asked if he could duplicate the gourds illustrated in Gerhard Lindblom's 1920 monograph on the Kamba peoples. Nzuki taught himself the technique and went on to develop his own style. He takes used, but non-engraved, gourds from a number of peoples, not just Kamba, and decorates them. On some he uses only geometric motifs but on others his more distinctive figurative scenes of stylized animals and humans in clearly bordered panels. His signature is a three-leaf cluster, the kakutu leaf (seen here at the pointed end of the cup). It refers to preservation and rebirth, specifically the Kamba tradition of an elder using a kakutu leaf to clean the eyes and mouth of a newborn baby.
This type of stoppered gourd would have been a medicine container.
Description:
Bottle gourd with a reed stopper and yellow, red and green glass beads around the middle. Cup attached with a leather strap. Cup and bottle are engraved with a filled-in triangular pattern and an elephant. Joined three leaf design that is artist's signature at pointed end of cup.
Provenance:
Mildred A. Morton, Falls Church, Virginia, collected Kenya, 1978 to 2000
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