A Rare and Extremely Fine South African Tsonga Prestige Staff by the ‘Baboon Master’

Period: 1850-1900

Medium: Wood

Dimension: 104 cm (41⁰/₁ inches)

Provenance: Ex Private Belgium collection

Literature: These staffs were used by indigenous Zulu leaders as ceremonial and important prestige items and were also carved for sale to European travellers and traders, soldiers and colonists who would purchase them as memento’s of Zulu land.
     The ‘Baboon Master’ was most probably a gifted migrant Tsonga wood carver working in the colony of Natal at the end of the 19th century and who developed a workshop carving staffs to meet a growing colonial commercial demand.          

Baboon Master Staff – Zulu / Tsonga – references 

The Art of Southern Africa  (The Terence Pethica Collection)

No. 57 (page 134/5) 

H – 113.5cm – 44 ¼ ins 
Provenance: Christies, Amsterdam, May 2000

The Mlungu in Africa art from the colonial period, 1840 – 1940 

M. Stevenson and M. Graham-Stewart 

No. 11a (page 38/39) 
H – 120cm – (height of figure: 27cm) 

Art and Ambiguity – Perspectives on the Brenthurst Collection of Southern African Art 

Johannesburg Art Gallery, 1991 

PL 34 (page 78) 

H – 105cm 
Provenance: Jonathan Lowen 

Ubuntu Arts et Cultures d’Afrique du Sud 

Exhibition Paris, 20 fevrier – 17 juin 2002 

No. 20 (page 166) 

Provenance: Jonathan Lowen
                     Brenthurst Collection 

(See Art and Ambiguity) 

Zulu Treasure Amgugu kaZulu 
The Local History Museums, Durban, South Africa, 1996

W92 – KCM, C3210 (page 91) 

H – 21cm 
Provenance: Ken Karner (1993) 


Known examples by the Baboon Master: 

two in Johannesburg Art Gallery (see above) 
one in the Museum fur Volkerkunde in Berlin
one in the Local History Museum, Durban (Zulu Treasures) (see above)