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Descrizione : A LATE 19TH CENTURY ZULU / TSONGA DIVINER'S STAFF, SOUTH AFRICAN A LATE 19TH CENTURY ZULU / TSONGA DIVINER'S STAFF, SOUTH AFRICAN the figural staff of carved wood and with silky reddish brown patina, carved with a figure to the top, his body terminating in the shaft, with a further fully limbed figure seated at the base of the staff, a serpent wrapped around the shaft and a turtle and lizard also carved in the full round, 90cm in length For a comparable diviner's staff see Lyon & Turnbull, 16 September 2020, lot 171. This staff came from the Susana Montiel-Colmenares, London Bernice and Terence Pethica Collection, and was published in Klopper, Nettleton and Pethica, 'The Art of Southern Africa', The Terence Pethica Collection , 2007, p. 124, n° 51 . They note in this book that The prevalence of snake iconography on staffs is linked to the perceptions of many southern Africans of these reptiles as beings whose ability to move from below the ground into the land of the living is a sign of their communication with the spirit realm. The appearance of snakes in the homestead is most often taken as denoting the visit of an ancestor or other spirit to the living. Most southern African peoples made, and still make, distinctions between the harmless non-poisonous snakes and the malevolent poisonous species. So pythons which are very large but not poisonous, although still dangerous, are associated with legitimate power and with healing, while cobras, which are feared by all those who have to move over open bush or thicketed areas, are also associated with power, particularly the ability to strike ones enemies via covert means. In this staff there is a particularly disconcerting end to the snake, curving up the stem of the pipe it appears to merge with the figure carved at the centre of the staff's length. This figure has no feet, having visibly flowed out of the same matrix as the stem of the staff, and the snake, curling up behind this essentially genderless form, provides it with a neck and head that are essentially a hybrid of snake and human features. It is likely that such an extraordinary and striking image was made on commission for a healer or diviner, most likely by a Tsonga carver, and that it would've been used in the context of healing or divination. Klopper, Nettleton and Pethica, 2007/
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