High-Backed Stool

Artist Luguru people

Place of OriginTanganyika (modern Tanzania)

Datelate 19th-early 20th century

DimensionsH: 42 1/2 in. (108 cm)

Mediumwood and dark pigment

ClassificationFurniture

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1994.21

Not on View

Label TextThroughout Africa, carved seats of honor are used by rulers and chiefs as symbols of authority and prestige. The carved human head and breasts of this stool extend over the small seat, making it difficult to sit upon. The Luguru use high-backed stools instead to support sacred objects—to represent the location of sacred power, the symbolic presence of an ancestor or other spirit—or to carry on poles in processions as symbols of rank. The triangle pattern carved on the back of the stool is identical to a regional motif called balamwezi, “the rising of the new moon”; it symbolizes hope, recognition, and rebirth.Published References"Principales acquisitions des musees en 1994," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, vol. 125, no. 1514, Mar. 1995, p. 77.

Roberts, Mary Nooter, Facing Africa: The African Art Collection of the Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, 1998, title page and pp. 44-45, repr. (col.).

Berkowitz, Roger M. "Selected Acquisitions Made by the Toledo Museum of Art, 1990-2001," Burlington Magazine, vol. 143, no. 1177, April 2001, p. 261, fig. XIV (col.).

Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo Museum of Art Masterworks, Toledo, 2009, p. 50, repr. (col.).

Comparative ReferencesSee also Murdock, G.P. Africa: Its Peoples and Their Cultural History, New York, 1959, pp. 358-363.

See also Sieber, R. and R.A. Walker, African Art in the Cycle of Life (exhib. cat.), Washington, D.C., National Museum of African Art, 1988, p. 113, no. 64.

See also Tanzania, Meisterwerek Afrikanischer Skulpture, Berlin, 1994, especially pp. 316-349 (E. Berlin, Haus der Kulturen der Welt) not in exhib.