Zulu Spoon South Africa

Zulu spoon from the early - mid 20th century. Dark, natural worn patina.

Zulu spoons were carved by men only, out of a variety of hard and soft woods indigenous to the KwaZulu area. They were used with great formality. Each spoon had a handwoven basketry holder, made by women. Spoons had to be placed in a specific pattern around a communal food dish, and not left standing in it, to avoid sympathetic magic--food sticking in one's stomach. In households with more than one wife, each would have commissioned for herself a set of spoons.

A young bride could not share the milk and meat of her husband's home until the gift of a goat had been exchanged between her husband's and her father's families. The goat was known as the "goat of the spoon," for with it was given the spoon with which the wife would eat sour milk and other food in her husband's household. I fell in love with Zulu spoons when one was the cover object on a Sotheby's catalog some years ago. In a year of traveling through South Africa, by far the best collection we saw was in the KwaZulu Cultural Museum in Ulundi.

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