The People of Heaven and their Art
Submitted by Standard Bank Team on Fri, 2011/11/11 - 15:47
Have you ever wondered about the origins of Zulu people's art? Here's some background...
Beading
Political finery held great importance in the kingdom of the AmaZulu, so artisans used imported materials such as brass and glass beads traded from Arabia, and later British sources, to craft objects made exclusively for royalty. Certain materials denoted rank; only the king could wear large beads, while women from his royal enclosure wore brass neckbands, beaded necklaces and waistbands of red, blue and white beads.
But colonialism shifted patterns of traditional Zulu life and by the early 20th Century beading had lost its royal status. “Commoners” started using beads to fashion loincloths and necklaces previously woven from grass and other fibres.
In the not too distant past Zulu women rarely worked in the cities and were urged by absent husbands to observe and protect traditions, leading to beadwork becoming a thriving art form, with a series of regional variations in the use of colour, pattern and style. The Zulu people are renowned for their intricate beadwork, which carries symbolic messages of love, peace and fertility through a range of geometric patterns. A well-known item is the Ibeheqe (generally sold as a love letter in souvenir shops). These narrow rectangles incorporate a geometric design composed of triangles in various combinations relating to male/female relationships. Typically a rural girl would send this to a young man working in the city if she had not heard from him for a long time.
Traditional Zulu art evolves
By the late 20th century the artisans that remained after the disruptive population shifts bought on by European colonialism carved meat plates, milk pails, walking stacks and headrests for general consumption and the growing curio market. Other items such as woven baskets and clay pots, which were produced for domestic and ceremonial purposes, also gained commercial popularity.
Headrests
Headrests, used as ‘pillows’, which served as stools all have a concave form; this gives them a common character and they resembles the stylised legs and tail of cattle, symbolically evoking associations with the ‘great herd’ (synonymous with wealth).
The animals provided a means of making contact with the ancestors while sleeping, resting with the neck in the hollow base of this unique pillow.
Traditionally a Zulu woman commissioned two headrests before her marriage; one for herself and one for her future husband. Although these headrests could be identical in design, a woman might choose to acknowledge her husband’s status by giving him a more elaborately carved headrest than her own. The headrest formed part of the bride’s dowry and would be regarded as a link to the spirits (amadlozi). Headrests are not commonly commissioned these days; they are often buried with their owners and many have however been preserved as ancestral relics.
The style and decoration used on these objects vary widely; the most common being the ‘amasumpa’ design, known as ‘warts’. These raised areas represent cattle and bear some resemblance to a cow’s udder. Chevron patterns abound, the repeated V-shape possibly referring to snakes, and most patterns are linked or are related to fertility. These adorned the surfaces of a vast array of crockery and ceremonial vessels.
Clay pots
Clay pots were traditionally made exclusively by women who produced items of rare beauty using very basic resources.
Black beer pots for the ancestors
Only the drinking and serving vessels used in Zulu beer drinking ceremonies are given a second, carbonised, firing to make them black. This strengthens the vessel and is a ritual to honour the ancestors.
Cooking pots were generally made with coarse red clay and were left unbleached and unpolished.
A case for baskets
There are five basic designs for Zulu baskets produced with materials such as dried grass, thin rushes and, more recently, telephone wire. Baskets were utility items in all rural homes, from the most royal to the most humble. Originally they were fairly plain, decorated with restrained self-weave patterns or limited colours, usually black or red. The varying colours of the geometric designs were achieved by dyeing the weaving materials with berries, roots and flowers.
From utility to commercial art
Beaded items and the other functional art pieces produced by the Zulu people were overlooked for many years as they did not conform to the accepted norms of what constituted art. Today, however, Zulu art objects fetch high prices and are represented in local and overseas art collections and a thriving commercial market exists for the production of these goods for the local and tourist market.
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Response to 'The People of Heaven and their Art'
While it is laudable that Standard Bank promote local arts, it is troubling that, when it can easily draw on a range of experienced writers and scholars, the bank allows this piece of writing, riddled with wildly generalized sentiments, factual inaccuracies, assumptions and grammatical errors, to appear on its blog. The bank should strive not to perpetuate old colonial and apartheid-styled mythologies or new insularities.
For example, the text refers to the ‘kingdom of the AmaZulu’ without explaining what this is or putting it into historical context. The Zulu kingdom was a political entity with dates and individuals associated with its formation and rise to power in the early 1800s. By not situating it in history, the writing suggests an highly generalized, stereotyped, ethnic ,‘Zuluness’ thereby perpetuating the idea of a ‘history-less’ Africa that existed before white exploration, settlement and colonization.
It will be very time-consuming to go through the whole piece so here are some comments on the first paragraph:
1) What is ‘political finery’? Is it possible for ‘finery’ to be ‘political’?
2) What period is the author speaking about? Which king?
3) European trade in beads to southeast Africa began around the late 17th century. Before then, and for another 200 years to come, no ‘Zulu kingdom’ existed.
4) Artisans did not make beaded items – women did.
5) Not sure what is meant by ‘beads traded from Arabia’. Early glass beads came from places such as Egypt, China, Persia and India as well as Indonesia. It is probable that Arab and other traders brought beads, amongst other trade items, down the east coast of Africa from the first millennium until European trade took over.
6) It is well-known that from the 17th century onwards, glass beads that were traded by European powers came from either Venice or Czechoslovakia
7) The red, white and blue colour choices for beadwork would have been associated with a particular period and a particular ruler. This would not have been a constant throughout the existence of the Zulu Kingdom
8) What is meant by ‘traditional Zulu life’? Scholars have shown how a shift to a centralized power system (which resulted in the ‘Zulu Kingdom) began in the 18th century when particular groups, including the small Zulu clan and (at the time) more powerful Ndwandwe clan, competed for control of trade in the region and needed armed regiments to enforce power. The Zulu clan triumphed and a centralized state with a powerful ruler then took the place of a more egalitarian system of dispersed and relatively self-sustaining households that had existed before. In this earlier system each household was under the control of an unumzane (household head) all of whom had more or less the same amount of power. A huge shift in lifestyle was experience by people under this new system – for example initiation schools and the practice of initiation was abolished by the Zulu state in favour of a system where young people were formed into regiments in the service of the king. Certain clans living above the Thukela River and bounded in the north by the Pongola River became incorporated into the Zulu Kingdom while those below the Thukela, many of whom had moved there to be free of Zulu dominance, experienced a range of relationships with the kingdom to the north. Those living within the heartland of the powerful Zulu Kingdom considered themselves upper-class, and considered those those living below the Thukela as lower-class. Thus it was not just colonialism that caused dramatic changes in lifestyle.
9) In the late 18th and 19th century beads were not only available in the region above the Thukela River where the Zulu Kingdom had its heartland. They were widely available in the region south of the Thukela (known as the colony of Natal from the mid 19th to early 20th centuries). Here people from all walks of life had been using beads well before the early 20th century. This is now part of KwaZulu-Natal and its people considered to be ‘Zulu’ – there is a history to be told about this as well.
10) Men's amabheshu and izinene (back and front loin coverings) were made from animal hide/skins. It is probably only very poor people without access to products made from animals who resorted to coverings from plant fiber.
11) Does the writer mean women’s girdles and back skirts? The traditional married woman’s skirt, the isidwaba, is made from the hide of cattle and sometimes from the skin of a goat.
I was particularly intrigued by the carved walking ‘stacks’ (!) in the ‘Traditional Zulu art evolves’ section
Response to 'The People of Heaven and their Art'
Hi Hidden Heritage,
Thank you for your feedback and valuable insight.
Our blog is essentially a platform to bring the wonderful art at our gallery forward to the public. We hope this encourages the public to come and visit the gallery to view the art and formulate their own interpretation.
The blog is also meant as a platform to give a perspective on the art itself, which is not cast in stone and not an academic perspective.
We encourage you to visit the gallery and have a look at this collection - hopefully we can get additional insight and writing from you on this interesting subject (as well as others relavant to you).
Thanks again for your feedback.
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