Lot 115 Dα

At least twelve of this rare and distinctive form of Northern Mbala headrest are known in museum collections, with their squat Janus figure support with elongated arms supporting the broad top. Those examples with collection information were collected in the early years of the 20th century.

Three were collected by Emile Torday, presumably during his two-year stay in the small Northern Mbala community of Kolokoto in 1905. Torday spent two years in the Kwilu area becoming fluent in Kimbala. One of the headrests he recorded as coming from Putubumba (BM Af1907,0528.14) and another from Mossonge (perhaps Mosenge) (BM Af1907,0528.13). The third Torday headrest is in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford (1907.21.1). Two Mbala headrests in the Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, were donated in 1917 by Nicolas Arnold, Secrétaire Général du Ministère des Colonies from 1911 to 1928 (EO.0.0.20154 and EO.0.0.20155) and a third in the MRAC was donated by Mr. and Mrs. J. Stoclet in 1945 (EO.0.0.40543).
A third Mbala headrest in the British Museum was donated by the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in 1954 (Af1954,23.1856).
Two are in German museums; one in the Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde, Munich, was purchased from William Oldman in 1926 (26-3-32) and one in the Ethnologisches Museum (SMPK), Berlin, was purchased from Julius Konietzko in 1919 (III C 31989).
Three are in museums in the USA, one in the Penn Museum was purchased from J. F. G. Umlauff in 1912 (AF796); another in the Metropolitan Museum of Art was gifted by Nelson A. Rockefeller in 1970 (1978.412.617) and finally an example formerly in the Jerome Joss collection is now in the Fowler Museum at UCLA (FMCH 90.453).