KWAYEP FIGS. 17 and 18: Attributed to Kwayep of Bamana, male figural sculpture for divination. Collected in Bali-Nyonga, Grassfields, Cameroon. Wood, pigment. H: 30.5 cm. Collected by Pierre Harter. Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, inv. 73.1992.0.58. Photo © 2012 Musée du Quai Branly/Scala, Florence. 97 different faces of Kwayep’s figures similarly reveal subtle similarities. On the Mannheim caryatid stool, the hat worn by the male figure runs to a point on the forehead and a very similar point is present where the eyebrows meet on the maternity figure. The noses are relatively short and the eyes are sculpted in the same way as the other pieces identified with Kwayep. A particularly expressive standing male statuette—also at the Musée du Quai Branly—is clearly the work of a talented and experienced Grassfields carver (figs. 17/18). It has a number of holes drilled into the front and back, which associates it with divination practices. Collected by Pierre Harter and associated with the Bali-Nyonga chefferie, the treatment of the face, the elongated back of the head (as also seen in the maternity figure), and the shape of the hands and arms offer formal and stylistic qualities correlative to features in known works by Kwayep. As such, I feel confident in attributing it to him. A seated bowl-bearing figure from the Baham Kingdom, close to Banganté, may also be attributed to Kwayep (fig. 19). The piece, decorated with blue, dark red, and white beads, was collected at the end of the 1960s in Cameroon. The sculpture wears a royal cap, a sculptural element that elongates its head (cf. figs. 17/18, 24/25). Individual morphological elements that suggest Kwayep’s authorship of this work include the relatively short nose and the open mouth, in this case with beaded teeth. The form of the figure’s back and the somewhat slanted angle of the stool beneath it are also elements that support the attribution (cf. figs. 10/11, 17/18, and 24/25). It should be noted that only the wooden sculpture under the beaded mantle can be connected with Kwayep. It is unlikely that he was responsible for the figure’s outer mantle since bead working and sculpture were separate professions. Finally, it is interesting to look at a stool with an integrated support figure, part human and part animal (figs. 20/21). It shares facial traits as discussed above with Kwayep’s work and other elements relate to the crouching “jigger boy” figure discussed below. This particular example has animal features including huge pointed ears. Whether this is by Kwayep’s hand or is from a Bawok workshop that influenced his style is not clear. Kwayep most likely moved back and forth between open and closed forms. He worked within the limits and criteria prescribed by the Bawok workshop but nonetheless experimented and developed his own style. On the one hand, Kwayep’s work was rooted in an older workshop tradition that made certain techniques, tools, and knowhow available, while requiring adherence to certain rules regarding iconographic details that expressed the local worldview in the treatment of subject matter. On the other hand, his artistic creativity, talent, and imagination most likely allowed him to move in flux between individualistic and social modes of imagining an object. Based on the style—and in two cases, information about manufacture and collection date—I assume that the maternity figure, the seated caryatid stool, and the standing male figure were made earlier, about 1910, whereas the kneeling caryatid calabash stand and the beaded bowl-bearing figure date to a more mature phase of the sculptor’s career, perhaps the early or mid-1930s. When Kwayep visited Egerton, the latter immediately
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