These carvings have traditionally been ascribed to the Kongo-speaking carvers working on the Loango coastline in the region of the mouth of the Congo River (in present-day northern Angola and southern Democratic Republic of Congo)1 in the years since the early nineteenth century. They range in size from miniature figures to metre-long tusks, and depict scenes of everyday life of both Africans and Europeans in the region. Most of the works are carved in ivory which, along with slaves, was the principal export of this region since the sixteenth century. However, works were occasionally carved in other types of horn and bone, including hippo teeth. The carvers perceptively portrayed the relationships between Africans and Europeans, and cameos of slave columns, porters, missionaries and traders are easily recognisable. A careful comparative study of the tusks would surely make it possible to identify individual hands on the basis of which probable oeuvres could be constructed. Amongst the many surviving examples, there are tusks that are noteworthy for their outstanding craftsmanship, unusual imagery and ability to create sculptural forms within the shallow relief.

According to the traveller-explorer, Josef Chavanne, 'a proficient, assiduous carver spends a whole day's work on each of the approximately 2-6cm tall figures, which frequently number in the dozens. Apart from the gross weight of the ivory, the price of such a carved tooth is calculated according to the number of figures and rests at 2-3.5 Mark per medium sized figure'.2 This would suggest that a carver could work for a month or more on a large tusk.

The imagery on the tusks is usually carved in a spiral, and often with a figure as a finial. The imagery of the carving that curves around the tusk may appear to depict a continuous pictorial narrative but is more than likely made up of individual scenes. The tradition of the spiral can be related to the carvings on indigenous oliphants which were played in Kongo courts. They were carved with designs resembling complex textile patterns spiralling around the horn which are also seen in Afro-Portuguese carvings from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Blier offers an interesting interpretation of the1 Julius E Lips in his pioneering The savage hits back or the white man through native eyes, London, 1937, illustrates numerous ivory carvings and tusks. He ascribes two as originating from the Mozambique coast (figs.139, 176), four from West Africa (figs.145, 169, 170, 172), and one from West Equatorial Africa (fig.149) which is the usual classification. If his source information is correct, these classifications would suggest that such carvers worked far more widely than generally assumed, or there was an active trade in these carvings along the coasts. 2 Josef Chavanne, Reisen und Forschungen im alten und neuen Kongostaate, Jena, 1887, translated and quoted by Barbara Plankensteiner, Austausch, Vienna, 1998, p.67.symbolism of this spiral motif in the earlier horns and the later tusks carved for export to Europe:

'that the open spiral compositional lines that distinguish the [late fifteenth-century] Kongolese oliphants allude to the path the dead themselves follow from earth to the ancestral realm and back again as newborns. Interestingly, spiral forms of this type are important compositional devices in more recent eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Kongolese ivories made for European patrons as tourist objects. With their parade of figures, such works also suggest the long and winding procession followed by individuals (both living and dead) as they leave the ocean shore to travel the mountainous route leading to the Kongo capital and to the home of the ancestors. In both cases, spirals reinforce the prominent identity of Europeans as signifiers of transition, death, and life.'3

For other examples, see Maria Kecskési, African masterpieces and selected works from Munich: the Staatliche Museum FŸr Všlkerkunder, Centre for African Art, New York, 1987, pp.281-289; D H Ross (ed), Elephant: the animal and its ivory in African culture, Los Angeles, 1992, pp.36-37, 160-161, 357; and Andrea Nicolls, A spiral of history: a carved tusk from the Loango coast, Washington (National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institute), 1998 which offers an insightful analysis of the iconography of a tusk.


1 Sidney L Kasfir, 'African art and authenticity: a text with a shadow'. In (eds), Reading the contemporary: African art from theory to the marketplace, edited by O Oguibe and O Enwezor, London, 1999, p.93.

2 To use Mary Louise Pratt's descriptive phrase; see Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial eyes: travel writing and transculturation, London, 1992.

3 Suzanne Preston Blier, 'Imaging otherness in ivory: African portrayals of the Portuguese ca.1492', The Art Bulletin, LXXV, September 1993; pp.375-396. The shift in power and the status of Europeans existing in a frontier society can often be identified with a specific event. In South Africa a dramatic shift occurred with the Anglo-Zulu war of 1879, in Zimbabwe it was around the time of the Matabele Rebellion in 1896-7, in West Africa when Benin was conquered in 1897, in the Sudan with the battle of Omdurman in 1898, in Namibia at the time of the genocide waged by the German army in 1904. In each of these regions the first encounters between Europeans and Africans were usually much earlier than the subsequent conflict and repression.