Vessel
Mangbetu Artist
Democratic Republic of the Congo

Details
Title
Vessel
Artist/Maker
Mangbetu Artist (Democratic Republic of the Congo)
Date
ca. 1910
Medium
Terra-cotta
Dimensions
12 1/2 × 6 × 6 inches
Credit
Purchase in honor of Debbie Wagner, President of the Members Guild, 2002–2003
Accession #
2003.36
This vessel’s form depicts the aristocratic hairstyle worn by royalty of the Mangbetu kingdom in central Africa at the turn of the century. In the early 1920s, the Belgian Queen Elizabeth photographed a woman of the Mangbetu court; her portrait was then circulated on the Belgian stamp, and images of Mangbetu women proliferated throughout the 1920s and ’30s.
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