Kongo Ebony wood statue depicting Chinese worker wearing Ivory hat,DRC.
first half 20th C
Wood
Organic material
Organic material
21 x 6 x 2 cm
2227
€ 1,600.00
Further images
Indigenous sculptors have ,historically ,always integrated “foreigners” in their work. The Japanese did it in their Netsukes, the Chinese in their Ceramics and the Africans in their sculptures. Several examples of carved ivory statues of Europeans are known. This wonderful (probably 19th C or early 20th C) Kongo statue depicts a Chinese worker. In 1892 the Congo Free State (now Democratic Republic of Congo) employed 529 Chinese workers from Macau to work on the Matadi-Stanley Pool railway. The Belgium railway followed a path roughly parallel to that proposed for the French Congo. That project had been notoriously dangerous. By March 1893 there were only 296 Chinese men left working, the others having died, escaped, or had been repatriated.