Earlier this month the Colin Sayers collection of African art was auctioned by Stephan Welz & Co. in Cape Town. The above Luba bowl bearer was the top lot of the sale and sold for € 18,000 (including premium). Most likely it was carved by by Kitwa Biseke, official carver to the Nkulu chieftainship (Mwanzi region). Many mbokofrom this workshop are known, but this one was a new addition to the corpus. More info can be found in an article by A. Nettleton: Burton’s Luba Mboko: Reflections of Reality, The Collection of WFP Burton(University of the Witwatersrand Art Galleries, Johannesburg, 1992, pp 51-67).
Below another mboko from this workshop published in African Fetishes and Ancestral Objects, together with a field-photo of the carver in action by Burton.
