登录
Democratic Republic of the Congo. Sensitively carved, the elongated face with heavy-lidded slit eyes beneath sweeping brows, a broad projecting nose, and a tapered lower face terminating in a pronounced chin. The prominent, rounded forehead is incised with a central vertical line and surmounted by a stylized three-pointed coiffure. Pierced at the sides for suspension, the reverse retaining the naturally porous structure of the bone.
Provenance: Pierre Loos, Brussels, Belgium. A private collection in Belgium, acquired from the above, and thence by descent. Pierre Loos (b. 1949) is a Belgian collector and dealer in African and non-European art. His interest in collecting began in 1962, when his father took him to the Brussels flea market. After abandoning his medical studies, he travelled extensively through Iran, Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Laos, and Thailand, making some thirty journeys through Asia between 1970 and 1979. Following several years as a dealer at the Sablon market, he opened his first gallery on Rue des Minimes in Brussels in 1974. A first visit to Congo in 1980 marked a decisive shift in his career; over the following decade he returned twenty-eight times, later undertaking numerous further expeditions through West Africa. In 1989, Loos and three fellow dealers founded BRUNEAF, the Brussels Non-European Art Fair, of which he served for many years as president. Alongside African sculpture, textiles, and ethnographic objects, he assembled important collections of early African photography and modern Congolese painting. Numerous works from his collection were included in the landmark exhibition Beauté Congo—1926–2015: Congo Kitoko at the Fondation Cartier in Paris in 2015. He also co-authored Zagourski: Lost Africa, published by Skira in 2001. Loos retired from the gallery trade in 2024, after fifty years as a dealer.
Condition: Very good condition, with expected wear, natural fissures, losses, and traces of handling and appreciation. The bone with a fine, naturally grown patina.
Weight: 21.6 g (excl. stand), 70.7 g (incl. stand)
Dimensions: Height 5.7 cm (excl. stand), 7.7 cm (incl. stand)
With an associated metal stand. (2)
Pende miniature mask pendants combine remarkable sculptural refinement with protective and symbolic significance. Known as gikhoko (plural ikhoko), they reproduce in miniature the distinctive features of full-scale Pende mbuya masks. Pende sculptors carved these pendants in both ivory and bone, including hippopotamus bone. The present example preserves the characteristic swelling forehead, heavy eyelids, and sharply tapering face, balanced by the three projecting elements of its coiffure. Such miniature masks attracted the attention of early twentieth-century ethnographers, notably Emil Torday, who collected two examples among the Pende for the British Museum in 1909 and documented their use in a photograph of a man wearing an ikhoko pendant; see Marc L. Felix (ed.), White Gold, Black Hands: Ivory Sculpture in Congo, 2011, ill. 14.
Their meaning and function have since been the subject of considerable scholarly discussion. Frans Olbrechts drew attention to the striking character of their facial features, which he likened to those of a death mask (ibid., p. 200). Léon de Sousberghe and the Pende scholar Mudiji Malamba Gilombe, however, interpreted ikhoko as miniature representations of established Pende mask types, particularly those of the Central Pende Mbuya corpus. According to this interpretation, the pendants embodied some of the protective and therapeutic powers associated with the masks themselves. See Léon de Sousberghe, Pactes de Sang, Pactes d'Union dans la Mort chez quelques Peuplades du Kwango, 1960, pp. 73–74.
Worn principally by initiated men, ikhoko served as personal ornaments, protective talismans, and signs of initiation. Their relationship to the larger masks extended beyond appearance: the pendants were understood to channel beneficial powers while protecting their wearers against harmful influences. They could also serve as healing charms, linking the intimate scale of the pendant to the wider spiritual and ceremonial life of the community.The three-pointed coiffure recalls the elaborate hairstyles represented on certain Pende masks, notably those associated with fumu, the chief. The combination of this distinctive silhouette with the restrained, almost closed eyes gives the present carving a composed yet commanding presence. Its smoothly worn face and deeply patinated reverse further emphasize the tactile character of an object made to be worn close to the body.
Literature comparison:
Compare a closely related Pende ivory mask, 6.5 cm high, in the British Museum, purchased from Emil Torday, registration number Af1910,0420.448. Compare a closely related Pende bone ikhoko, dated before 1939, 5.7 cm high, in the Museum Rietberg, Zurich, inventory number 2018.479, collected by Hans Himmelheber in 1938–1939 and subsequently gifted by Martin Himmelheber. Illustrated in Nanina Guyer and Michaela Oberhofer (eds.), Congo as Fiction: Art Worlds Between Past and Present, Zurich, 2020, pp. 210–211, fig. 286.
Auction result comparison:
Type: Closely related
Auction: Christie’s Paris, 19 June 2014, lot 192
Price: EUR 13,750 or approx. EUR 18,500 adjusted for inflation at the time of writing
Description: Pende ivory pendant, Ikhoko, Democratic Republic of Congo
Expert remark: Compare the closely related subject, manner of carving, and size (5.5 cm). Note the different material.
Auction result comparison:
Type: Closely related
Auction: Sotheby’s Paris, 7 July 2021, lot 184
Price: EUR 5,040 or approx. EUR 6,200 adjusted for inflation at the time of writing
Description: Pende ikoko pendant, Republic Democratic of the Congo
Expert remark: Compare the closely related subject, manner of carving, and size (5.5 cm).
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