Topic: African tribal figures,help!

[keith]

Nearly 3 ft tall,heavy and a very hard wood,are they just early tourist pieces? I'm sure someone here knew something about African art but can't remember who

[Anne]

I can't recall who that might have been, Keith, perhaps ChimpMad? 

Meanwhile, I've found some useful looking links which I'll add here for starters:
Wikipedia overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_art
Sites with listings for sale, useful for seeing what's what:
http://www.africainfinite.com/catalog.php?act=view_prod&i=&l=&sid=&id_categ=5622
http://africabydesignimports.com/
http://www.acaciawoodcarvings.com/servlet/the-African-Tribal-Masks/Categories
and this one for the African Art Museum: http://www.zyama.com/ which says it has "a collection of African tribal art featuring over 1,200 artifacts from 100 ethnic groups." Definitely worth exploring! 

[keith]

Thanks Anne,not seen the ones at the start but have just finished trawling through the last one,phew,took ages with no success ,I'll try the others when I've had a kip,ta.

[Frank]

Very nice pieces.
They look to be in good condition, this points to them having been removed from Africa when new. Only path to easy dating is tracing their history. Another pointer would be the fabric, is it hand or machine woven. Wood sculptures in tropical countries have a relatively short life typically <100 years. I would guess these to be relatively modern. Problem with books and stuff on the web is it mostly illustrates museum quality pieces that left Africa long ago. Popularity in Europe started with the artists of the 20s/30s.

[keith]

Thanks Frank, do like tribal carvings got a very nice one from Ghana from my 'brother-in-law' also from Ghana,