Beads and Beadwork of West and Central Africa (Shire ethnography) - Softcover

Beads and Bedwork of East and South Africa.

Original brochure, 15*21 cm. Zustand: Gut. 64 p., 43 ill. A good and very clean copy. - Beads have been used as currency and adornment since the earliest times. As Africa developed trade contacts, beads were imported from India and the east from as early as the first century AD and glass beads have been found in the ruins of Great Zimbabwe. Later, European traders brought beads by the shipload to buy gold, ivory and slaves. Such trade beads were made in Venice, Bohemia and Amsterdam. As beads became commoner they were used to make bead ornaments in increasing quantity and variety. The many types of beads and beadwork that occur in Africa, from the Sudan and the Horn of Africa through East Africa to South Africa and Namibia, are differentiated and described within their cultural setting in this book. Beadwork ornaments may be used as status symbols for royalty and important men or as part of the dress suitable for a young bride or a married woman. Zulu girls make bead ornaments (the 'Zulu love letters') for their young men; the messages are subtly conveyed by combinations of colours. Childless women decorate dolls with beads, hoping to get a real baby. Even everyday things stools, gourds, snuff boxes, smoking pipes and musical instruments are embellished with beads. - About the author: Margret Carey began her career as an archaeologist, then became an assistant keeper in the British Museum's Department of Ethnography (now the Museum of Mankind, London) from 1953 till the birth of her elder daughter in 1961. She has also worked as an assistant in the ethnographical section of the Horniman Museum, London, and is currently a special assistant at the Museum of Mankind, where she designed an exhibition on the Bemba people of Zambia. Her special areas of interest are in the art and beadwork of eastern and southern Africa, and she has contributed to the Encyclopaedia Britannica on these subjects. She has written reviews and edited books on African art, including Masks and Figures from Eastern and Southern Africa, and written an illustrated paperback, Myths and Legends of Africa (both Hamlyn). ISBN 9780747801009 Sprache: Englisch Gewicht in Gramm: 550. Artikel-Nr. 1235004

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