Souvenir Ivory with Figurative Motifs

This souvenir tusk captures a transitional period in Central Africa’s Loango Coast. It would have been commissioned from a Vili carver by an American, Brazilian, Indian, or European employee of a shipping company or other institution stationed there. Vili carvers were famous for intricate ivory carvings executed with iron tools. They exercised significant agency in style and self-representation when filling a patron's order. Here, the artist depicts people and animals likely headed to market. Like Seminole doll-makers, Vili artists reproduced of-the-moment clothing. The figures wear both Loango waist wrappers and European tailored coats. A spiral band references zinga (coil of life), a centuries-old motif from the nearby Kongo kingdom. Blending imagery, Central and Western African artists had carved ivories for local and foreign patrons since the fifteenth century.