120
FIG. 3 (above left): Crest,
tsesah, attributed to the
Master of Bamendjo.
Bamileke peoples,
Bamendjo Chiefdom,
Grassfi elds region,
Cameroon. 19th century.
Wood. H: 72 cm.
Museum Rietberg, Zurich,
inv. RAF 721.
FIG. 4 (above right): Crest,
tsesah, attributed to the
Master of Bamendjo.
Bamileke peoples,
Bamendjo or Bayangam
Chiefdoms, Grassfi elds
region, Cameroon.
Late 19th century.
Wood, paint, iron dowel, plant fi ber,
plant gum. H: 53.3 cm.
Fowler Museum at UCLA. Gift of the
Wellcome Trust, inv. X65.5820.
FIRST ENCOUNTERS
Until the 1960s, only three examples of tsesah
crests were known in Europe, all collected between
1904 and 1925 by colonial offi cials and
missionaries in the Bamileke region. The fi rst
crest was collected in 1904 in the chiefdom of
Batcham by the German colonial agent Von Wuthenow
and entered the collection of the Völkerkunde
Museum in Leipzig shortly afterward
(inv. Maf. 9.401). It was fi rst published in 1911
by Paul Germann in an essay on the arts from
Cameroon that distinctively identifi ed the crest’s
original location as “Batscham” (fi g. 1). In December
1943 it was destroyed by Allied bombardment
and we know this work’s appearance
only from archival photographs.
The second example to have entered a
European collection is the most frequently
reproduced of the group and is now held by the
Museum Rietberg in Zurich (inv. RAF 721) (fi g.
3). According to historical records, it had been
collected in Bamendjo, about 10 km northwest
of Batcham, between October 1912 and May
1913 during an exploratory expedition by the
German colonial administration to prepare
for an extension of the colony’s railroad. The
Hamburg-based ethnographica vendor J. F. G.
Umlauff acquired this crest alongside hundreds
of works collected on that occasion.3 Umlauff
promoted this ensemble as one of the fi nest and
most complete collections of arts from Cameroon
outside those found in German institutions.
In 1921, the crest was published for the fi rst
time by renowned art critic Carl Einstein in
Afrikanische Plastik. There, it was listed as being
in the collection of Sally Falk of Mannheim. It
then moved through the collection of Colognebased
art dealer Karl Nierendorf before entering,
around, 1924 the collection of famed collector
Baron Eduard von der Heydt, who later donated
his collection to the city of Zurich.4
A third crest was collected in 1925 by the
French protestant minister Father Frank Christol,
in either Bamendjo or Bayangam,5 the latter
FEATURE