An exceptional Berber Wooden Plate

Elegant Ceremonial Wooden club from the Lobi Tribe in Burkina Faso, dating from around 1960,beautifully carved and patinated, mounted on a custom made iron stand, very decorative piece

Set of 4 Spatula from the XINGU,an Indian Tribe in Brasil, these wooden objects were used for cooking, from the collection of Gunther Hartmann (1924-2012), a German Ethnologist, very...

An exceptional set of 3 Shell objects from Papua New Guinea, made as ornaments used in the hair or as decoration of the body, decorated with hand carved figures made out of coconut o...

Exceptional Wooden And Plaster model of a Tower-Roof Construction, a French beautiful Maitrise, from around 1960 very good and warm patina of the wood and plaster, elegant constructi...

Moroccan Berber hand-carved wooden sugar hammer "Deggaga". Handcrafted by the Berber women of Morocco, hand-carved and hand painted wood with tribal desig...

An Exceptional Eastern Cape Nguni Pipe Bowl and Stem  Wood, metal Old inscription and dated: ‘1892’  South Africa  19th Century  Size: 45.5cm long - 18 ins long  Provenance: Taylo...

An Exceptional Eastern Cape Nguni Pipe Bowl and Stem Wood, metal Old inscription and dated: ‘1892’ South Africa 19th Century Size: 45.5cm long - 18 ins long Published: ‘The ...

Papua New Guinea, 18th-19th century L. 22.5 x W. 18 cm (approx.) Provenance: Collected by Schulze-Westrum Collection Rinck Hollnberger, Munich (purchased in the 1980s or 1990s) For a comparable skull see the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The heads of humans and of animals such as crocodiles and pigs formerly played integral roles in the ceremonial life of Papuan Gulf peoples, who considered the heads to be vessels of life-giving supernatural power. Within men’s ceremonial houses, human skulls were displayed, together with sacred images such as spirit boards or gope, by the members of each clan in a specially constructed clan shrine. However, not all heads required the death of an enemy. In some areas, heads made from wood or other materials appear to have had powers equal to actual ones. In contrast to skulls, the facial features of wood heads were sometimes depicted as they appeared in life. This example comes from the Wapo Creek area, where wood heads appear to have been used interchangeably with actual skulls. When headhunting was abolished by Australian colonial...