Magic Masks, Curvy Women From Congo Bewitch in Paris: Review

White gold, black hands: ivory sculpture in Congo

Ivory sculpture in Congo, part 1.

This is THE BOOK if you collect or like African Art Ivory’s. Limited editionof 999. Hard cover, A4 format, 280 pages, +/- 1000 color illustrations. Many articles from ivory experts in English, French, and Dutch. I will be on sale in Brussels during the Bruneaf at Galerie Congo, 2 Impasse Saint-Jacques, during the Lega exhibition. Price around 250€.

Never has a book dealt specifically with the ritual use of antique ivory sculptures in the Democratic Republic of the Congo – until now.

Click the image to enlarge the cover of  White gold, black hands: ivory sculpture in Congo

Ivory is a touchy subject. People seem reluctant to publicize this appealing medium, fearing that its glorification might lead to the  killing of elephants.

The authors are aware of today’s poaching and illegal trade in African elephant tusks and address the problem directly.

The book opens with an essay by “Renaissance man” Charles Meur, who explains what ivory is and identifies the different animals that produce it. His superb drawings and incisive texts show where elephants were previously living and who their ancestors were.

Congo basin «Ritual Art» specialist Marc Leo Felix details the production and use of traditional ivory sculpture in the Kongo Kingdom between the 16th and 20th centuries.

Musicologist Dr. Ignace De Keyser of the Royal Museum for Central Africa, in Tervuren, Belgium, writes about an astonishing northern Kongo ivory trumpet inspired by an ancient European model.

Dr. Nichole N. Bridges of the Baltimore Museum of Art (USA) describes the 19th century production, along the Loango Coast, of exquisitely sculpted ivory tusks for a newly arrived European clientele.

Some thousand stunning color photographs, drawings, graphs and maps illustrate the four authors’ essays.

I can send you the book for 290€ all costs included:

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Some information about one of the ivory’s illustrated in the book that will be sold at auction in Paris in June : ...

This summer 2010, the musée du quai Branly will showcase 170 major works and eighty documents as part of an important exhibition devoted to the artistic traditions of Central Africa, namely Gabon, the People’s Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo, with a catalogue of François Neyt

Fleuve Congo

François Neyt, Sté…

(author of Songye )

A real trip of initiation that will take the visitor from the forests in the north to the savannahs in the south, the exhibition brings out the links existing between the works produced in the areas lying on the banks of the majestic Congo River by various communities which speak the Bantu language…