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Tobacco pipe bowl

This pipe bowl made of fired clay depicts a crocodile. It was made at the beginning of the 20th century in the Kingdom of Bamum in the Cameroon grasslands. Around 1900, kings, dignitaries and heads of families in the Cameroon grasslands smoked tobacco. The higher the rank of the smoker, the more splendid the pipe should be and in the kingdom of Bamum, crocodiles were symbolically closely associated with the king. The pipe bowl was collected between 1903 and 1914 by the doctor Anton Handl. Handl served as a doctor in the so-called German Protection Force for Cameroon between 1903 and 1913. In 1909, the Ethnological Museum acquired two similar tobacco pipe bowls: a larger one from Mr Thorbecke (III C 28973) and a smaller one from Mr Ankermann (III C 25572). (JF 03.01.2017)

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Data Provider
Ethnologisches Museum Show original at data provider

Cataloguing data

Object type
Tobacco pipe bowl
Material/Technique
Sound
Current location
Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Inventory number
III C 45596
Related object(s)

Provenance and sources

  • Production
    when
    around 1905
    where
    Cameroon
    Bamun (Bamum, Mamum, Bamoun, Mamoun, Mamoum)
  • Collecting
    who
    Deborah Glasser - Former Possessors
    Anton Handl (1875-05-08 - 1954-08-08) - Collectors
  • Assignment to a curated holding:
    Africa

Information about the record

Legal status metadata
CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED
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