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112200 FIG. 14 (left): Coiffure with metal appliqués. Lango, Uganda. Human hair, brass, vegetable fi ber, cane. L: 21.6 cm. Collected by J. P. V. Jervoise. British Museum, inv. Af1938,1207.2. © The Trustees of the British Museum. of brass and seldom used beads. Some of the names for these various groups are found only in Powell-Cotton’s account and were undoubtedly of his own invention. As such, they are very diffi cult to verify today and identify with the appropriate historic peoples. Nonetheless, he photographically documented all of these coiffures and illustrates many of them in his book, starting with those of the Dodinga. When Powell-Cotton eventually reached the Latooka area, it was evident that tastes there had changed since Baker’s visit of forty years earlier, including the way in which hair helmets were made. The felt base was now covered with a large number of thin brass panels (fi g. 8), which produced the impression of a gleaming golden helmet, very different from those made by neighboring groups. These were shorn from the heads of deceased men and given to younger warriors of the same family and were usually worn only by warriors proven in battle. The less affl uent had to be satisfi ed with a hair helmet made from a mass of red clay. According to Fitzroy Somerset’s accounts of 1918,16 such helmet coiffures were completed with the attachment of a long rod, decorated with thousands of red, white, and black weaver bird feathers affi xed to it (fi g. 9). This shows how forms evolved among the Latooka over a period of more than fi fty years. Naturally, accounts are often snapshots of the moment at which an expedition passed through, so they may not represent a defi nitive progression of style. Moreover, not every author recorded anthropological details, though this is understandable when one considers the circumstances under which these contacts took place, especially in the nineteenth century. The issue was often just survival, and long stretches of traveling in a state of permanent fever were commonplace. Although most coiffures were not removable, some were designed and manufactured as standalone pieces. This practice was sometimes associated with highranking individuals, whose “hats” were often completely covered with glass beads. Two very fi ne examples of these, attributed to the Toposa, are in the National Museum of African Art in Washington, DC (fi gs. 11 and 12). Captain G. R. King gives an account of the Toposa published in 1937 by Leonard Nalder,17 which includes the information that important men among them wore caps that were completely covered with beads arranged in concentric circles.18 In some areas, the wearing of head coverings continued well into the twentieth century. Leni Riefenstahl photographed gleaming golden Latooka helmets in the 1960s,19 although no later observations of these helmets were made. Beaded ornaments underwent an unexpected renaissance in the twentieth century among the Dinka, which culminated in the creation of one of Africa’s most unusual and diffi cult to produce beaded creations, the Dinka “corset” (fi g. 15). This corset and other beadwork made in more recent times demonstrate that the desire of the people of this region to adorn themselves remains to this day a practice stimulated by a plentiful supply of brightly colored glass beads. Even now in the twenty-fi rst century people like the Oromo in Ethiopia and the Maasai and the Turkana in Kenya, who maintain a traditional way of life, still produce and wear complex beadwork jewelry. FEATURE


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