Cameroon Grasslands stool

Western provinces

Cameroon

19th to early 20th century

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This is an extremely rare type of stool from the Grasslands region of west Cameroon. Only a handful examples are known in old museum collections (see the last image with two pre 1900 examples at the Ethnographic Museum of Berlin, collected around Bamenda, and one pre 1934 example at Musée du Quai Branly Jacques Chirac, collected by Mission Labouret).

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The construction of this stool is unique: Four pillars of a very light type of wood (balsa?) sit on and support two platforms made of palm tree branches. The decoration on the seat is particularly remarkable on this example, with four mythical lizards on the sides and deep groove patterns at the center, but also in some places on the central posts. 

 

A piece of furniture totally ignored by african art and ethnography litterature so far.

The stool comes from a french estate.

 

H : 41 cm (16 1/4 inches)

Price: 900 Euros enquiry

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