Basket
Catherine Elliott, Nessa Leibhammer, 2017 DDF Africa research:
Basket made for Europeans, not for domestic use as otherwise would be round. Cf dwellings -- it is possible to respect and receive the ancestors in a round house, but not in a square house. Missionaries encouraged people to live in square buildings as it fitted their idea of ‘order'. Customary round house is same as a womb, with the entrance acting as a vagina. Child is properly ‘born’ when it is taken from inside the house to the outside. See Berglund Zulu Thought Patterns and Symbols.
Cooling collection, acquired late 1800s to 1920s.
Basket made for Europeans, not for domestic use as otherwise would be round. Cf dwellings -- it is possible to respect and receive the ancestors in a round house, but not in a square house. Missionaries encouraged people to live in square buildings as it fitted their idea of ‘order'. Customary round house is same as a womb, with the entrance acting as a vagina. Child is properly ‘born’ when it is taken from inside the house to the outside. See Berglund Zulu Thought Patterns and Symbols.
Cooling collection, acquired late 1800s to 1920s.
Object Summary
- Accession Loan No.
- 434/2005/39/1
- Collection Class
- Household objects
- Material
- plant fibre
- Common Name
- basket
- Simple Name
- basket
- Production County
- Colony of Natal (now southern KwaZulu-Natal)
- Production Country
- South Africa
- Production Year High
- 1920s
