The art of the Lozi people warrants further research. Although their bowls and dishes are included in many of the surveys of African art, there has been almost no systematic research articulating their distinctive aesthetic which is often quirky, idiosyncratic and inventive. The Lozi are the dominant group of the Barotse-speaking people in what is today Zambia. They have a history of extensive conquest and are renowned for their complex system of flood-plain cultivation and related seasonal movement of the king and his court. Their power and reach were reduced with the establishment of the British Protectorate of Barotseland in 1890 but they nevertheless played a significant role in the political history of Northern Rhodesia and Zambia.

The pieces in this catalogue all date from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when European travellers and missionaries first interacted with the Lozi people in the western flood-plains of the Zambezi River. The Lozi are noted for their fine basketry but generally did not carve wooden domestic pieces - it tended to be carvers from several subjugated groups such as the Kwanga and Mbunda who met the demand for wooden objects at the Lozi court.

This dish has a shallow concave surface and a rim perforated by a triangular pattern. The geometric precision of the carving is noteworthy and illustrates the Lozi carvers' acute skill and sense of abstraction. For another elliptical platter, see The power of form, Milan, 2002, p212.