Ethnographica & Tribal Art

A rare standing figure from the Yuat River area of Papua New Guinea was the star of the show at a Brussels auction.

Always a bonus for buyers is two fairs in the same venue on the same day.

Dealer and collector Kenn Mackay developed an interest in ethnographic art during his travels in the early 1980s.

Only a handful of companies have created products with sufficient impact that their brand names become generic descriptions for objects of their type.

“I have always been interested in stone,” says dealer Anthony Meyer.

Laurent Dodier is a longstanding exhibitor at Parcours des Mondes.

For its Parcours exhibition the Galerie Serge Schoffel from Brussels will be focusing on the Timoto-Cuica, a culture that flourished between 800-1200AD in the area that is now the Trujillo province in Venezuela.

Figures from the region that is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo will be the subject of the themed exhibition 'Kongo' that Galerie Lucas Ratton on the rue Bonaparte will be putting on for Parcours des Mondes.

Tribal Art London (TAL), the UK’s main fair dedicated to the collecting field, will be a virtual event this year.

Sotheby’s New York is holding an online auction from September 7-13 featuring 50 examples of sculpture from across the world’s continents selected from the longstanding collection of Martin and Faith-Dorian Wright.

Bonhams is holding a sale of Modern Native American Art in Los Angeles on August 30 that includes the collection of Canadian Inuit sculpture assembled by Wendy and Dr Les Fisher of Chicago.

The network of small streets in the left bank area of Saint Germain des Prés once again hosts a series of gallery exhibitions for the Parcours des Mondes.

The sale of Michel Périnet’s collection of tribal art at Christie’s in Paris on June 23 real ised a remarkable €66m/£57m (including buyer’s premium) and every one of the 61 lots were sold.

The best-performing lots in the tribal art sale at Woolley & Wallis (25% buyer’s premium) in Salisbury on June 8 were these two pieces: an Ibibio mask (idiok ekpo) sold at £30,000 and a Nicobar standing male figure (kareau) that brought £34,000.

This Fijian kava bowl, or daveniyaqona, carved in the form of a shallow figure, would have been used for both the consumption of kava (yaqona – the intoxicating liquor of the pepper plant) by priests during religious rites and to hold sacred oil.

Exhibition at firm’s new premises focuses on headdress and headwear

The increasingly contentious issue of selling Benin works of art at auction raised its head again last week after an ancestral plaque catalogued as 16th or 17th century was withdrawn from an East Sussex sale.

David Malík of David Malík African Arts has a primary interest in the field of Contemporary African art and the long-standing art traditions of western and central Africa.

This dance mask known as a takü, would have been used during rituals to mourn the dead by the Cubeo tribes of present-day Colombia and Brazil.