Tabwa Female Figure with Beads Congo Rohner Collection

Tabwa Female figure, crouching, with glass beads and Cowrie shells on natural fibers, around the neck and waist.

Tabwa art, native to the Tabwa people across Congo, Zambia, and Tanzania, is famed for its intricately detailed wooden carvings, masks, and sculptures, marked by abstract geometric designs. Its roots trace back to the 17th century when skilled craftsmen began settling in the southeastern Congo, passing down carving techniques through generations. Tabwa sculptures symbolize assisting ancestors in daily life and hunting, bearing elaborate scarification, formerly serving as identifiers of locality and social status and later as body art, denoting adulthood and social belonging. 

Provenance: John R. Rohner Collection
Rohner, a museum curator for decades, aimed his practiced eye for authenticity to African art beginning in the early 1908s. His passion for this art only grew through the decades he built his collection––always with an aim for a broad and representative array of pieces. The collection appears in his book, Art Treasures from African Runners (2000, University Press of Colorado). 

Item #541 on pg. 214

Height: 13.0
Width: 4.0
Depth: 4.25

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