122
FIG. 6 (above): Father
Frank Christol (1884–
1979). “The Guardians of
the Temple – Totems of
fecundity. Circumscription
of Dschang, Bamileke
region,” before 1928.
Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques
Chirac, Paris, inv. PP0022953.
Tsesah crests are not the only genre
of oversized headdresses created by
Bamileke artists. They are part of a
tradition of monumentality that is
found both in regional masquerade
traditions and in offi cial or courtly
architecture.
FIG. 7 (right): Crest, tsesah.
Bangwa peoples,
Grassfi elds region,
Cameroon.
Wood. H: 46 cm.
Collected by Adam Pollock and
Robert Brain in Fotabong I, 1967.
The British Museum, London,
inv. 1973 A.F. 36.1.
© The Trustees of the British
Museum.
FEATURE
FROM ETHNOGRAPHICA TO SCULPTURAL
MASTERPIECE: THE RIETBERG TSESAH
Photographs and written descriptions published
in about twenty African art surveys, dating from
the 1920s until the 1970s, that featured the Rietberg
tsesah crest allow us to trace the evolution
of its status over the years, from the moment of
its extraction from Cameroon.
Before its publication in Einstein’s 1921 Afrikanische
Plastik, it had been photographed and
illustrated in 1914. That year, Umlauff produced
a lavishly bound photographic album intended
as a sale announcement targeting possible buyers,
especially ethnographic museums9 (fi g. 11).
It not only contained hundreds of photographic
plates featuring works for sale, but also a series
of photographs taken in Cameroon, including
portraits, artworks in situ, and packaging methods
for shipping. The name of the fi rm Umlauff,
which by then had added “museum” to its company
identity to assert its status as a scientifi -
cally sound enterprise, is boldly printed at the
top of the pages. Within this album, “Tafel 102.
Tanzmasken aus Holz” (plate 102: dance masks
in wood) shows the crest hanging crookedly on
a wall, the centerpiece in a group of ten masks
and headdresses arranged in a symmetrical display.
The works are numbered to correspond
to a caption printed at the bottom of the page.
A tape measure provides a sense of scale. The
tsesah crest, number 460, is listed as coming
from Bamendjo. This photograph, and the entire
album that contains it, is a wonderful window
onto the commercial practices of one of Germany’s
most successful ethnographica vendors at
the beginning of the twentieth century.10 In this
setting, the crest is presented as a commercial
good meant to be sold in bulk to an ethnographic
museum.
A later version of the same album, dating to
the early 1920s, testifi es to the rest of the story of
this collection (fi g. 12). Umlauff, despite his best