Cleveland Museum of Art
Snuff Container
- Date
- 1800s-1900s
- Medium
- Horn and wood
- Culture
- Africa, Southern Africa, Lesotho, South Sotho maker
- Department
- African Art
- Institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
- Object ID
- 168423
From the Cleveland Museum of Art record
This snuff container in the form of a human (female) figure was carved from cattle horn. The form of the image follows the curve of the horn, with arms and hands held to the chest. Despite its smallish size and minimalist execution, this object demonstrates considerable expressive power. Cattle had special meaning for the pastoralist peoples of southern Africa in that it stood for the wealth and status of the individual and the group. However, similar to the ideas associated with tobacco and snuff, cattle also referred to the world of the ancestors. Snuff containers like this one had great significance for their owners and users. The tobacco product snuff was stored in decorative, yet useful, containers like this one.
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Provenance & credit
As published by the source institution. Coverage varies — not every institution's open-data feed includes ownership history.
- Credit line
- Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
- Provenance
- 2005: Steven Alpert, Dallas, TX | 2010: (Jacaranda Tribal Art Gallery, New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) | 2010–: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
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