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Headrest (Mutsago)
Shona, South Africa
Wood; 14 x 19.2 x 6.5 cm
Late 19th or early 20th century
University of the Witwatersrand Art Galleries, Johannesburg, Standard Bank Collection of African Art

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Shona Headrest (Mutsago)

by Anitra Nettleton

Headrests were made by many Southern Africans, primarily to support the heads of their owners while they slept and protect their elaborate coiffures, which would fall into disarray if their heads touched the ground or sleeping mat. Such pillows were usually placed at the nape of the neck and thus did not come into contact with the sleeper's hair. Most headrests were carved of wood, often in a style common to the region in which it was made.1 The headrest shown here may be from central Zimbabwe; although there is no known documentation about its origins, it corresponds to stylistic criteria outlined by William Dewey for this region.2 Headrests were probably in use in southern Africa as early as the thirteenth century, if not before; such a dating is indicated by the gold sheeting found in archaeological deposits at Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe from that period, which may have been used to cover headrests of high-ranking individuals. While the form of these headrests is not clear from the archaeological record, it is possible that they bore some resemblance to present-day Shona and Tsonga examples.3

Among the Shona headrests that have survived intact are some with intensely personal designs. It is thought that these elaborately carved and embellished pieces were used only by adult men, and that each of them may have been custom-made for its individual owner. The style of headrest shown here has come to be regarded as typically Shona, and has been the subject of some debate as to its interpretation. The support consists of three main elements—a relatively simple vertical (or horizontal) bar in the middle, flanked by two composite vertical forms each of which consists of a truncated triangle above and below an oval or circle—resting on a base with two lobes interrupted by a small triangle. There seems to be a consensus that headrests of this type have an essentially female quality, whether through the triangular notch on the base (which may refer to female genitals), or through the designs on the support (called nyora, the same name used for the scarification that Shona women used to have on their torsos).4 These headrests often feature different designs on the front and back of their supports, possibly referring to the front and back of a female body. Common on the oval or circular elements of the support are concentric circle motifs, which, in some examples are replaced by three-dimensional breast forms, but which may well refer to the ends of the conus shell (ndoro), worn as signs of status by adult Shona men and women;5 the example shown here lacks either of these motifs, and instead has a grid pattern. Such a headrest might have been used by a man in the past by placing it outside the dwelling of one of his wives to indicate that he intended to sleep with her that night. In that context, such headrests functioned as metaphors for a sleeping arrangement, in which the man wished to replace his metaphorical female sleeping partner, represented by the headrest, with his living wife.

Headrests probably had other uses, too. Headrests were generally buried with their owners, but might also be passed onto their heirs after their owners died and may have become part of a collection of ancestral relics. But headrests may also have had less obvious connections with ancestors through their association with dreams. The nyora on women's bodies, and perhaps on the headrests, are said to have been linked to the woman's patrilineage (rudzi),6 her relationship to her most important ancestors, the mhondoro. A link with the mhondoro may also be provided by the circle motif referred to above and its association with the ndoro, a decoration worn by diviners to this day. When a person sleeps and dreams, it is said by the Shona that he or she has been "walking" with the ancestors (in this case, the vadzimu), a state in which the person is metaphorically "dead" and, as in death, in a prone position where his or her body casts no shadow.7 The headrest thus may be regarded as a conduit to a world of dreams, which are important in rituals of divination.

Dewey has reported the ways in which both a chief and a spirit-medium came to regard their headrests as just such conduits to the spirit realm.8 In the case of the chief, a new headrest—quite dissimilar in form to the one shown here—was commissioned to enable him to receive dreams from the ancestors to help him solve court cases. The case of the spirit-medium is somewhat different. He was directed by his shave (tutelary spirit) to go to a cave and recover his headrest from the burial site within, to use in his divination rituals so that the shave could visit him during his dreams. Shave spirits are distinguished both from the great spirits (mhondoro) and the ancestors (vadzimu) in that they are conceived of as "foreigners" who have died away from home and have not received proper burial.9 These spirits wander around the country and find people to perform sacrifices for them, and they are regarded as the tutelary spirits of gifted orators, poets, musicians, and craftsmen. Sacrifices to these shave spirits may be made to objects associated with them, such as headrests.

Because of the intensely personal character of a headrest, it is therefore not surprising that they were usually buried with their owners, to support their heads in death as they had in sleep. A person's head is ultimately connected with that person's patrilineage: the Shona say that when a woman marries, her husband owns her body but her head remains her father's 10—that is, it remains in the patrilineage of her paternal kin, and with their vadzimu. The headrest thus supports the part of the body that, whether in metaphorical or actual death, represents the individual crossing the divide between this world and the domain of the ancestors (pasi).

1. See Anitra Nettleton, "'Dream Machines': Southern African Headrests," South African Journal of Art and Architectural History 1, no. 4 (1990), pp. 147–54.

2. William J. Dewey, "Pleasing the Ancestors: The Traditional Art of the Shona People of Zimbabwe" (Ph.D. diss.), and William J. Dewey et al., Sleeping Beauties: The Jerome L. Joss Collection of African Headrests at UCLA (Los Angeles: Fowler Museum of Cultural History, UCLA, 1993).

3. Dewey, Sleeping Beauties.

4. Ibid., and Nettleton "'Dream Machines.'"

5. Dewey, Sleeping Beauties.

6. Anitra Nettleton, "The Figurative Woodcarving of the Shona and Venda" (Ph.D. Diss., University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 1984).

7. Herbert Aschwanden, Symbols of Life: An Analysis of the Consciousness of the Karanga (Harare: Mambo Press, 1982).

8. Dewey, Sleeping Beauties.

9. Aron Hodza and George Fortune, Shona Praise Poetry (London: Oxford University Press, 1979).

10. Ibid.