No. 9. Sculpteur d’Ivoire (ivory sculptor)
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.Loango coast ivory was in demand as early as the seventeenth century for its especially fine quality and whiteness. During the nineteenth century, purely ornamental sculptures in this medium produced by local Vili carvers were highly sought after by Western consumers. While some carvers worked entirely freehand from their imagination and observed experience, others reproduced pencil drawings or prints provided by European patrons. The composition featuring as many as one hundred figures was blocked out with a chisel from the base to the tip of a tusk following a spiral band around its surface. Exacting details were then fleshed out with finer blades and knives.
Artwork Details
- Title: No. 9. Sculpteur d’Ivoire (ivory sculptor)
- Artist: Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Robert Visser (German, 1860–1937)
- Date: Photograph, ca. 1890–1900; postcard, ca. 1905
- Geography: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Loango Coast; Republic of the Congo; Cabinda, Angola
- Medium: postcard
- Dimensions: 5 1/2 × 3 1/2 in. (13.9 × 8.9 cm)
- Classification: Postcards
- Credit Line: Holly W. Ross Postcard Collection, Princeton
- Curatorial Department: The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing