104 what merchants’ ships brought into the harbor city of Hamburg—animals, shells, reptile skeletons, and antelope horns, as well as the full range of ethnographic artifacts, from jewelry to costumes to the large category of what were then called “fetishes.” Under the direction of Heinrich Umlauff, the elder son of the company’s founder, by the turn of the century the firm was organizing its own collecting expeditions all around the world, going to locations as diverse as Iceland, Greece, Lithuania, the Pacific, and Africa. As the years progressed, Umlauff became specialized in selling ethnographica, eventually becoming one of the main providers of ethnographic materials to museums in Germany, Switzerland, and beyond. Like Oldman, Umlauff assembled what he and his contemporaries considered “complete” collections from a single provenance, an ensemble of items thought to be representative of the entire production of a specific cultural group. The company had scientific pretentions and worked closely with ethnographic museums as well as for the then popular world expositions, organizing exhibits on their behalf complete with mannequinfilled scenes and dioramas. Also like Oldman, Umlauff promoted its collections by publishing fully illustrated albums that were sent to possible institutional clients. The photographic plates were representative of both of Umlauff’s specialties: “complete” collections and scenes with mannequins (figs. 11, 12, 13, and 14). In order to support their scientific credentials, field photographs were occasionally added to the albums. Among these, a rare scene of works from Cameroon being stored procures a vivid and unique image of collecting practices in Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century (fig. 7). Taken during a 1913 collecting expedition in western Cameroon, this photograph accompanied one of the largest albums ever produced by Umlauff, which was sent to the Penn Museum in an unsuccessful effort to sell the collection to the institution. Gordon traveled to Hamburg in person in 1912 and selected from Umlauff a group of 1,827 works from the Congo. These had all been collected in 1905 and 1906 by Leo Frobenius during his famed “Congo-Kasai Expedition.” 10 Works deemed to be duplicates by the Hamburg Museum für Völkerkunde, which had sponsored his expedition, were sold off to Umlauff, allowing the vendor to promote the scientific nature of its activity. This was one of the best documented collections acquired by the Penn Museum at that time. The objects came to the museum accompanied by a fifty-two-page-long, tightly handwritten list indicating the vernacular name and exact site of acquisition of each piece (figs. 8 and 9). Besides the FIG. 5: Face mask. Kuba people (probably Bushoong subgroup), Democratic Republic of the Congo. Wood, pigment, raffia and cotton cloth, cowrie shells, glass beads, brass tacks. H: 33 cm. Purchased from W. O. Oldman, London, 1912 (AF 3685). Image courtesy of the Penn Museum. Ngady Mwaash is the name of a female face mask that, among the Bushoong subgroup in the southern Kuba region, forms part of a triad of masks which are used at public ceremonies, in initiation, and, most prominently, at funerals. In the Kuba capital, they also appear in performances celebrating the mythical foundation of the Kuba kingdom. Specifically, Ngady Mwaash represents the sister-and-wife of Woot, the Kuba equivalent of Adam, from whose incestuous union the Bushoong dynasty sprang. The parallel lines painted under the eyes, one of many polychrome geometric motifs decorating the mask’s surface, are said to represent tears and allude to the mourning of the death of a member of the men’s initiation society. For more information, see especially David A. Binkley in Frederick John Lamp. See the Music, Hear the Dance. Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, 2004. C.P. FIG. 6 (right): Photograph of the Cameroon collection in storage in Hamburg. Published in J. F. G. Umlauff, 10 Gruppen-Aufnahmen der großen Kamerun-Sammlung. Catalog no. 220. Hamburg: J. F. G. Umlauff Völkerkundliches Institut und Museum 1913. Photograph courtesy UMPA. FEATURE
I-IVCoverT68 E_CoverF Vuvi
To see the actual publication please follow the link above