SNK 1212-49

Guro Heddle Pulley, Ghana

Stylised woman

H: 12 cm (4,7″), W: 4,5 cm (1,8″), D: 2,5 cm (1″)

This heddle pulley with the decorated top is a typically example of how African carvers add an aesthetic element to everyday objects.
Guro art is characteristically elegant. Carvers produced elegant heddle pulleys decorated with human or animal faces. This heddle pulley is decorated with a human face with horns similar to typical Guro masks with antelope shape. The antelope is beloved for its grace and speed and for the folkloric belief that a mythical antelope taught men to farm. The Guro people are mostly farmers. Therefore, their craftsmanship embraces imageries tied to the land and to agrarian practices.

Provenance: Private Danish collection. It was either acquired directly from Lau (Laurence) Sunde’s collection in Copenhagen, which dates back to the 1940s, or Lau (Laurence) Sunde was an adviser to the collector.
Sunde had a “Etnografica” boutique in 1948, that became recognized among collectors as the most specialized boutique of its kind at the time. Tribal and oriental artefacts were purchased from private collectors as well as at auctions in Paris, Amsterdam and London, among other places.

Full description of Lau (Laurence) Sunde will be forwarded by request.

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