Page 190 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

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THREE SPOONS antelopes carved on the spoons are always shown port of entry. Possibly it was not far from, or even
devouring leaves. This motif is common in the art the same as, the shop that produced the Bini salt-
i6th century of Owo, a Yoruba city about 100 kilometers from cellars, considering the similarity between the
Bini-Portuguese style, Nigeria Benin (see, for example, the covered ivory cup in only human figure carved on a spoon, perhaps a
ivory the Musee des Beaux Arts in Lille). Portuguese apprentice sailor (now in the British
7
72: length 25 (9 /sj The concave bowl of the spoons, so thin as to Museum, London; Bassani and Fagg 1988, no.
appear translucent, is the most refined element. 171), and the figure represented in profile on a
3
73: length 24.8 (9 /4J This may have led to the erroneous description of saltcellar now in Berlin (Bassani and Fagg 1988,
the pieces in Florence as "spoons of mother of no. 126).
74: length 25.7 (loVs)
pearl/' The elongated shape, tapered toward the The numerous examples that have come down
Museo di Antropologia e Etnologia, Florence rib along the back, and toward the point at which to us and the relatively late (1588) but precise
it meets the handle, where it curves forward to description by James Welsh, "In Benin they make
75-76 form a three-sectioned hook, seem inspired by spoons of Elephant teeth very curiously wrought
Two SPOONS the form of a leaf. These motifs are rare in Benin with diverse proportion of fowls and beasts made
art, whereas they appear frequently in the Owo
that the creation
(1904, 452), suggest
upon them"
i6th century figurative tradition. Some fifteenth-century of Bini-Portuguese spoons (and perhaps the horns
Bini-Portuguese style, Nigeria terra-cottas excavated at Owo show leaves of the and saltcellars) began later than that of Sapi-
ivory sacred akoko tree (Eyo and Willett 1980, nos. 70- Portuguese spoons and lasted longer, until about
71). Reference to the leaf shape and the marked the end of the sixteenth century, when Prince
3
75: length 24.8 (9 /4J absence of the horror vacui that characterizes Christian of Saxony is recorded to have purchased
l
76: length 26 (io /4) Benin art suggest that the makers of the spoons a dozen of these objects (Wolf 1960).
may have been Owo artists working for the Oba The diminishing numbers of elephants that
Museo Nazionale Preistorico e Etnografico Luigi
Pigorini, Rome alongside other Bini members of the Igbesanm- resulted from over-hunting due to the European
wan, according to a tradition reported by R. A. demand for ivory may have ended the carving
references: Zeiler 1659, 53; Dapper 1668; Heger Bradbury in his posthumously published notes. of larger works for export, such as saltcellars
i#99, 109; Welsh 1904, 452; Wolf 1960; Bassani This workshop could have been located outside and oliphants, but small spoons continued to
1975; Dam-Mikkelsen and Lundbaek 1980, 47; the city of Benin, not far from the Portuguese be produced. E.B.
Eyo ant/ Willett 1980; Bassani and Fagg 1988

Spoons are the most numerous category (forty-
eight examples have been identified to date) of
Bini-Portuguese ivories. A very large number of
them must have been made since so many have
survived despite their fragility. The three spoons
in Florence and the two in Rome were listed
among the possessions of Eleonora of Toledo, wife
of the Grand Duke Cosimo i de'Medici in 1560
(Bassani 1975). Other groups of these valuable
objects were part of the celebrated "cabinets of
curiosities" amassed by various sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century European collectors (Bassani
and Fagg 1988, nos. 134-169).
Documents in Dresden and Ambras describe
the spoons in those collections as "Turkish" (Wolf
1O
1960) or of "Turkish shape" (Heger 1899, 9)> an
attribution curiously repeated in the Florentine
inventories beginning in 1793; one of the spoons
in the collection of the merchant Christof Weick-
mann of Ulm is described as "Indian" (Zeiler
1659, 53), while one from the Danish royal collec-
tion, now in Copenhagen, is called "Japanese"
(Dam-Mikkelsen and Lundbaek 1980, 47). Such
mistaken oriental attributions are typical of the
early inventories. Iconographical and stylistic con-
siderations prove beyond a doubt the Nigerian
origin of the spoons. Carved in the round on the
handles in various combinations are leopards and
antelopes, birds, snakes, and crocodiles eating
smaller animals, all belonging to traditional Bini
iconography, as can be seen in the innumerable
works in brass and ivory found in Benin. The

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD 189