All Episodes - Things - 20 November 2013 - Carved Things, Carved Identities: Africa

Carved Things, Carved Identities: Early Modern Luso-African Ivories and the History of African Combs Dr Sally-Ann Ashton (Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge)Hair combs from Africa and the African Diaspora 1500-1900Professor Jean Michel Massing (History of Art, University of Cambridge) The Sierra Leone ivory sculptures AbstractsDr AshtonThis talk will consider both the types and sources of evidence, and the lack of evidence for this single category of object between 1500 and 1900. It will also consider what hair combs can tell us about the transference of culture from Africa to the Americas and Caribbean.Prof MassingThat stone and ivory carving was practised in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is indicated by the stylistic similarities between certain nomoli and a group of ivories – the so-called Sapi-Portuguese ivories – datable to that period. This is confirmed by Valentim Fernandes (1506-1510), according to whom the Sapi carve “delicate works in ivo

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