Pipe - Chokwe - Angola

Beautiful Chokwe pipe carved with a Cihongo mask
Angola
Total length: 60 cm
Period: beginning of the 20th century (1920-30)
Provenance: e.g. Portuguese colonial collection, Edgar Vigario collection - Lisbon, Portugal, Paulo Akam collection (Portugal), private collection - Belgium

These pipes, carefully carved, were part of the prestige objects of peoples related to the Chokwe such as the Ovimbundu, Lwena, or the Songo. From the 1880s, they appear in the accounts and depictions by explorers, with chiefs using these pipes in this region of Central Africa, in Angola or the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Chokwe chiefs (black-and-white photographs) became increasingly involved in trade with Europeans, eager for rubber, wax, and ivory, as well as African slaves for their colonies in the New World. Local chiefs who prospered through this trade frequently commissioned prestige objects from local artisans to display their wealth and power. This tobacco pipe is one of those objects.

A pipe with a "Cihongo" mask, carved by the same hand, was exhibited at Parcours des Mondes 2014 (last photograph).

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