Crest (tsesah)
On loan to The Met
This work of art is currently on loan to the museum.This tsesah was collected in the Bamileke chiefdom of Bana, around sixty miles south of the powerful center of Bandjoun. Slightly smaller in scale than the other examples exhibited here, its mouth is narrower than its cheeks, and it has a more concave vertical brow. The Bandjoun carver Paul Tahbou, who was responsible for a revival of the crest mask genre in the 1970s, interpreted the distinctive form of tsesah crests as a hippopotamus emerging from the water. According to that reading, an invisible waterline marks the shift between the vertical forehead and the horizontal, forward-projecting cheeks, nose, and mouth. Across the Bamileke chiefdoms, hippopotamuses, recognized for their might and their ability to move both on land and in the water, are considered pi—powerful animals that might be used as a fon’s avatar.
Artwork Details
- Title: Crest (tsesah)
- Date: Late 19th century
- Geography: Cameroon, Grassfields region
- Culture: Bamileke peoples
- Medium: Wood
- Dimensions: H. 30 5/16 × W. 20 7/8 × D. 10 13/16 in. (77 × 53 × 27.4 cm)
- Classification: Wood-Sculpture
- Credit Line: National Museum for African Art, Smithsonian Institution, gift of Walt Disney World Co., a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, 2005-6-5
- Curatorial Department: The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing