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Musical Instrument (Lamellophone)

Widespread on the entire African continent and especially south of the Sahara, "thumb pianos" such as this are to this day not only used together with other musical instruments to accompany dance on festive occasions; their "voice" sometimes also serves the educational purposes of history tellers. This type of instrument comes in many variants, but in all cases several lamellas are mounted on a board or a resonance body and are plucked with the fingers to create music. Text: Sandra Ferracuti.

Data Provider
Linden-Museum Stuttgart Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde
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Cataloguing data

Cultural attribution
Ambo
Object type
Musikinstrument
Dimensions
Länge: 20.2 cm, Breite: 9.7 cm
Material/Technique
Adhesive mass, Wood, Iron, Copper, Copper alloy, Brass
Forged, carved, bound, glued, plugged
Current location
Linden-Museum Stuttgart
Inventory number
028140

Provenance and sources

when
around 1900 or earlier

where
Namibia

when
1903
Provenance
Dr. Anton Lübbert initially sent the collection to the Ethnological Museum in Berlin on the basis of the so-called Bundesrat resolution of 1889. Before it was forwarded to Stuttgart, Felix von Luschan selected and sorted the material there. In German South-West Africa, Lübbert had objects procured through "his collectors". Only a few months after the outbreak of the Herero-German War, in September 1904, Lübbert wrote to Linden that "it is already almost completely impossible to get Herero items". He had therefore "had the last stocks, which were in the hands of farmers and traders, bought up". Text: Christoph Rippe.

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