Before entering royal residences, visitors might be required to dip into this bowl to obtain kaolin. A fine white clay with important medicinal properties, kaolin also signified loyalty, purity, and ritual respect for the spirit world. It was spread on visitors' arms and faces and on the ground before the king. The woman who supports the bowl is lean and capable, seemingly ready to vault from her spring-like legs to assist her ruler.
Wood
19 1/2 x 12 3/4 x 10 in. (49.5 x 32.4 x 25.4 cm)
Gift of Katherine White and the Boeing Company
81.17.875
Provenance: [Berkeley Galleries, London, England]; purchased from gallery by Katherine White (1929-1980), Seattle, Washington, 1971; bequeathed to Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington, 1981
Photo: Paul Macapia
Not currently on view
Resources
Exhibition HistoryLos Angeles, California, Frederick S. Wight Art Gallery, University of California, African Art in Motion: Icon and Act, Jan. 20 - Mar. 17, 1974 (Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, May 5 - Sept. 22, 1974). Text by Robert Farris Thompson. No cat. no., p. 94, reproduced pl. 129.
Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Art from Africa: Long Steps Never Broke a Back, Feb. 7 - May 19, 2002 (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Oct. 2, 2004 - Jan. 2, 2005; Hartford, Connecticut, Wadsworth Atheneum, Feb. 12 - June 19, 2005; Cincinnati, Ohio, Cincinnati Art Museum, Oct. 8, 2005 - Jan. 1, 2006; Nashville, Tennessee, Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Jan. 27 - Apr. 30, 2006 [as African Art, African Voices: Long Steps Never Broke a Back]). Text by Pamela McClusky. No cat. no., pp. 52, 54, reproduced pl. 32.
Seattle Art Museum respectfully acknowledges that we are on Indigenous land, the traditional territories of the Coast Salish people. We honor our ongoing connection to these communities past, present, and future.
