Gabon · Wood / Hardstone Carving
Mbulu ngulu ('image of the dead'); the reliquary ensemble tradition is also called Bwete or Biwiti among some Kota-related communities
The carving and copper/brass sheet-cladding of reliquary guardian figures by the Kota, a Bantu ethnic group of the Ogooué-Ivindo province in northeastern Gabon, with related families living in neighboring Congo-Brazzaville and Cameroon. A wooden figure -- highly stylized and flattened into an abstract planar form, with a diamond-shaped lower body representing the torso and elaborate crescent-form headdress representations of coiffure -- is carved first, then covered with sheets of brass and copper attached with hand-wrought copper nails; patterned decorative areas are created through repoussé, metal relief hammered from the back of the sheet. Mounted atop a basket or bark cylinder containing the skull and bones of a distinguished clan ancestor -- a leader, warrior, artist, or particularly fertile woman -- the figure served as a guardian, its luminous copper and brass surface considered intimidating and spiritually empowered to deflect harmful forces and protect the relics and the owning family. In the early twentieth century, Kota religious beliefs changed and French colonial authorities banned the reliquary tradition; production is believed to have stopped by the 1930s, with many mbulu ngulu and their accompanying reliquary baskets burned, buried, sold, or taken to Europe as Christian missionary pressure intensified. First collected by European naturalists and explorers beginning in the 1870s, including Paul Du Chaillu, mbulu ngulu abstraction became a significant source of inspiration for early 20th-century modern artists following their arrival in France and Germany.
Risk level: Critically Endangered · Not independently inscribed
The carving and kaolin-whitening of okuyi (mukudji) masks by Punu carvers of southern Gabon, representing an idealized female ancestral spirit and worn exclusively by male members of the mwiri society during acrobatic stilt-dance…
The single-piece hardwood carving of guardian figures and heads mounted atop bark reliquary boxes containing ancestral skulls, by the Fang peoples of northern Gabon, southern Cameroon, and Equatorial Guinea.
The carving of the ngombi, a sacred arched harp central to Bwiti religious practice among Gabon's Fang, Mitsogo, and related ethnic groups, carved from a single hollowed piece of lightweight wood -- traditionally cottonwood -- and covered…
Whakairo rākau (wood carving) is one of the supreme technical and artistic achievements of the Pacific — the carved meeting houses (wharenui) of Māori are among the most elaborately decorated wooden structures in the world.
The carving and polychrome painting of religious sculpture in the Valladolid tradition — the most technically sophisticated religious wood sculpture tradition in Spain.
The making of the Weihnachtspyramide — the multi-tiered rotating wooden structure driven by heat from candles mounted at its base, whose rising warm air turns fan blades at the top that rotate the carved figure tiers displaying nativity…
The wood carving tradition of Oberammergau — the Bavarian Alpine village world-famous for its Passion Play (Passionsspiele), where the entire village community has performed the life of Christ every ten years since 1634 as a plague vow.
The production of Berchtesgadener Ware — the traditional craft objects (Schachteln — round bent-wood boxes, and turned wooden bowls, toy figures, and decorative objects) produced by the craftspeople of the Berchtesgadener Land since the…
The making of the Räuchermann (smoking man) — the lathe-turned wooden figure with a hollow body designed to hold an incense cone (Räucherkerze), the smoke emerging from the figure's open mouth.