Spoon
Life Story
Among the Dan people of the Guinea Coast region of what is now Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire, ceremonial spoons such as this are known as wunkirmian or wake-mia (roughly translated as ‘feast spoon’). Carved with great skill and precision and produced in great numbers across the region until the mid-twentieth century, these large spoons served a principally symbolic rather than practical function within past Dan communities – where they were awarded to the local woman deemed the chief hostess within a particular village quarter [1]. This honorary position, the bearer of which assumed the title of wunkirle and was entrusted with their village quarter’s wunkirmian spoon, was endowed with much social status but also assumed great responsibility within their local community – organising and overseeing feast days as well as hosting outsiders, especially during religious festival seasons.
Wunkirmian spoons were also considered a source of great spiritual power. Consequently, the creation of a new spoon was marked by a series of prescribed sacrifices and wunkirmian appeared alongside other important sacred objects in masquerade performances – during which the nominated wunkirle would parade her spoon throughout her village quarter while distributing gifts and grains to local people [2]. In their ability to link the social to the religious via the medium of feasting, wunkirmian spoons therefore acted as a reminder that a wunkirle’s hosting responsibility extended not just to her community’s worldly inhabitants but to the spiritual realm present alongside it.
Like many wunkirmian, this example blends human anatomical components with abstracted forms to create a loosely anthropomorphic figure [3]. While most extant wunkirmian spoons incorporate human heads within their handle sections, some Dan carvers used anatomically detailed human legs to form the spoon’s handle. This wunkirmian includes both the head and torso of a slender female figure with prominent calves supporting a crucible above, which is carved on its reverse with herringbone-style patterning. According to some local accounts, a carver’s decision to use legs was, aside from allowing them an opportunity to demonstrate their artistry, meant to evoke the crowds of people who come on foot to be fed from the bountiful stores of their local wunkirle.
Theo Weiss, July 2021
[1] Susan Vogel [ed.], For Spirits and Kings: African Art from the Paul and Ruth Tishman Collection (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1981), 70-71
[2] Steven Hooper [ed.], Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection catalogue. Vol. 2: Pacific, African and Native North American Art (Yale University Press, 1997), UEA 206
[3] Barbara Johnson, Four Dan Sculptors: Continuity and Change (San Francisco State University Press, 1987), 20
Further Reading
Eberhard Fischer & Hans Himmelheber, ‘Spoons of the Dan (Liberia/Ivory Coast),’ in Homberger [ed.], Looking, Serving, Eating - Emblems of Abundance, Museum Rietberg (1991).
Alexander Ives Bortolot & Jan-Lodewijk Grootaers [eds.], Visions from the Forests: The Art of Liberia and Sierra Leone, Minneapolis Institute of Arts (2014).
Ernst Winizki, Afrikanische Loffel /African Spoons, Museum Rietberg (1990).
Provenance
Purchased by Robert and Lisa Sainsbury from K. J. Hewett on 21st May 1970.
Donated to the Sainsbury Centre, University of East Anglia in 1973 as part of the original gift.
Not on display
Title/Description: Spoon
Born: 1850 - 1950
Measurements: h. 472 x w. 110 x d. 55 mm
Accession Number: 206
Historic Period: 19th Century - Late, 20th Century - Early
Credit Line: Donated by Robert and Lisa Sainsbury, 1973
