Research Catalog

Title

African seats / edited by Sandro Bocola ; with essays by Ezio Bassani... [et al.] ; photographs by Heini Schneebeli ; [translated from the German ... and from the Italian ... by Elizabeth Clegg].

Publication

Munich ; New York : Prestel, c1995.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Bocola, Sandro, 1931-
• Bassani, Ezio
• Vitra Design Museum
• Musée national des arts africains et océaniens.
• Museum Villa Stuck.

Description

200 p. : ill. (some col.), maps; 30 cm.

Summary

• African seats have exceptional sculptural power; and they range from items incorporating carved figures to extraordinarily abstract forms of a minimalism astonishing even by Western standards. No other non-European culture can lay claim to such a variety of seats.
• Alongside a multitude of stools and backrests for everyday use and unique to a particular group, one finds ritual seats decorated with symbolic representations, ceremonial stools and the partly European-inspired chairs of the heads of families, tribal princes and kings.
• Drawing on over 170 examples, this book offers a survey of the seats of sub-Saharan Africa, an integral part of a traditional culture that is already disappearing. The various essays by noted ethnologists address the cultural histories and aesthetics of African seats and other objects, as well as their regional characteristics. In addition, there is a wealth of photographic evidence documenting the use of seats and their original contexts, both past and present.

Series Statement

Annales. Sciences humaines / Musée royal de l'Afrique centrale ; vol. 146 = Annalen. Menswetenschapen / Koninklijk Museum voor Midden-Afrika ; vol. 146

Uniform Title

• Afrikanische Sitze. English.
• Annales. Sciences humaines ; 146.

Subject

• Art, African > Exhibitions
• Chairs > Africa, Sub-Saharan > Exhibitions
• Stools > Africa, Sub-Saharan > Exhibitions

Genre/Form

Exhibition catalogs

Note

• Catalog of an exhibition held at the Vitra Design Museum and 5 other museums in Europe, between June 1994 and May 1996.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 196-199).

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Through western eyes / Sandro Bocola -- Concerning African objects / Lorenz Homberger and Piet Meyer -- African furniture between tradition and colonization / Roy Sieber -- Early evidence of African seats / Ezio Bassani -- The smal grandfather chairs of the Gere / Hans Himmelheber -- Asante stools -- Maps of Africa.

ISBN

• 3791314262
• 379131386X (German ed)
• 2711831094 (French ed)

LCCN

^^^96219783^

OCLC

• 35252681
• SCSB-10130440

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library