Footnotes

This rare male drum finial figure would have adorned one end of a massive drum, the central focus of an Mbembe village. Called ikoro, the drums were housed in dedicated sanctuaries and also served as altars. Played with two sticks their sounds would carry messages up to 10km. Warriors would present the ikoro with trophy head on their return from battles. By the time Charles Partridge arrived in the area in 1905, the use of these monumental drums had been discontinued and he found one decaying in the bushes.

In 1974 Hélène Kamer (later Leloup) held an exhibition in Paris which showcased eleven monumental Mbembe sculptures, Ancêtres M'Bembé, bringing them to the attention of many collectors for the first time. All the figures she had acquired from the Malian dealer, O. Traoré, who like many other West African dealers was venturing eastwards in search of works to acquire having exhausted the areas closer to home. Traoré had shown Kamer the first of the figures in Paris in September 1972 which she purchased immediately. Traoré made two further journeys to the area and acquired for Leloup all the figures which would feature in the exhibition. (Alisa La Gamma, 'Silenced Mbembe Muses', in The Metropolitan Museum of Art Journal, 2013, vol.48, pp.143-160).

They comprised male warrior figures and maternity figures, some of which had once adorned each end of large ikoro drums; a fierce warrior, sometimes holding a severed head and knife, contrasting with a serene mother and child at the other end.

Two complete drums are preserved in the Berlin Ethnologisches Museum. One, acquired by the dealer, Max von Stefenelli in 1901, which measures 3.3m. in length, has been radiocarbon dated to between AD 1320 and 1640.

The date Kerchache acquired this drum finial figure is unknown but it was certainly in his possession before Kamer acquired her group of figures as he loaned it to the large and important exhibition at the Kunsthaus, Zurich, Kunst von Schwarz-Afrika, which ran from October 1970 to January 1971. At the time it was attributed to the Igbo and was incorrectly described as female. It would later feature in the major exhibition Primitivism in 20th Century Art at MoMA in New York in 1984, by which time it had been attributed to the Mbembe.