Wooden headrest with notched, bilobed seat on a flat pedestal with thick concave disc base and plaited hide carrying loop, mended with a scrap of textile [RTS 11/4/2005]

Collection type: Object
Description: Wooden headrest with notched, bilobed seat on a flat pedestal with thick concave disc base and plaited hide carrying loop, mended with a scrap of textile [RTS 11/4/2005]
Long description: Headrest carved from a single piece of yellowish brown wood (Pantone 7509C), stained an orangey red colour in places (Pantone 469C). This consists of a narrow seat at the top that has a bilobed plan view - that is, strongly concave down the long sides but swelling out to convex ends, each with a shallow concave section cut out of their centre. The seat is slightly convex across the width, and markedly concave along the length, and has a slightly convex underside with a tall pedestal foot extending from its centre. The pedestal has a narrow, rectangular sectioned body with concave sides making a convenient, hand-sized grip, before turning sharply in again just above the base. The base itself has a conical upper part that slopes down to a thick, flat sided edge, with a deeply conical concavity on the underside. The pedestal has been pierced at top and bottom, and a carrying loop fitted through the holes. The loop itself is made from several narrow strips of hide plaited together using a herringbone technique, in which the strips are perforated along their lengths and interwoven with one another; the resultant handle is in this case square sectioned, and probably made from four strips. These seem to have been originally yellow (Pantone 7508C) but are largely covered in brown dirt. At the top end, this has been fitted through a short hide loop that passes through the hole in the pedestal to be secured with a knot on the other side. At its base, however, the original hide loop is missing, and has been replaced with a strip of greenish gray tightly woven textile, also knotted at the end (Pantone 451C). The seat is complete and intact, but has a flaw in the wood on one side of the foot that has left a notch in the surface. It has a weight of 364.6 grams, and is 192 mm high; the seat is 224 mm long, 77 mm wide and 7 mm thick; the pedestal has a maximum width of 57 mm and is 15 mm thick, with a hole diameter of 7 mm, while the base is 85.5 mm long, 84 mm wide and 26 mm thick, and the carrying loop is 115 mm long, 10.5 mm wide and 9.5 mm thick [RTS 11/4/2005].
Geographical reference: South Sudan
Africa > Eastern Africa > South Sudan
Cultural groups: Toposa
Person: Field collector John Mack; PRM source Patti Langton
Date / Period: Date made: Before 1980
Date collected: 1980
Acquisition information: Purchased: 1979, uncertain
Materials and processes: Material Wood Plant, Material Animal Hide Skin, Material Textile, Process Carved, Process Stained, Process Polished, Process Perforated, Process Plaited, Process Knotted, Process Repaired (local)
Dimensions: Height 192 mm, Length 224 mm, Width 77 mm seat, Height: max 7 mm seat, Diameter: max 85.5 mm base, Weight 364.6 g
Object numbers: Accession number: 1979.20.201
Research and responses: John Mack discusses South Sudanese headrests, commenting that in recent times they are found amongst transhumant groups who use them to protect elaborate hairstyles, and that this particuar type of headrest is used by the Toposa, Didinga and Larim in Sudan, and also across a wide area of northern Uganda, Kenya and in adjacent areas of Ethiopia. The variety with semicircular cut-outs of the seat edges, as seen here, is more restricted in distribution to the Toposa and Larim. Personal items such as knives and tobacco containers are sometimes attached to the central pedestal (J. Mack, 1982, "Material Culture and Ethnic Identity in Southeastern Sudan", p. 117). Discussions of the Toposa may be found by Captain G.R. King in L.F. Nalder (ed.), 1937, A Tribal Survey of the Mongalla Province, pp 65-81 and A.C. Beaton, 1950, "Record of the Toposa Tribe", Sudan Notes and Records XXXI.
A similar object is discussed by Trowell and Wachsmann, who state that the Karamoja and Acholi of Uganda use stools as headrests to support elaborate hairstyles, often hardly bigger than a man's hand, with a top curved to fit the neck with a strap to allow it to be carried on the arm (M. Trowell & K.P. Wachsmann, 1953, Tribal Crafts of Uganda, p. 157, see especially pl. 34F). The southern Larim also use this style of headrest - see 1979.20.172-173 for very similar examples. Patti Langton reported that the design of those was supposedly copied from the Ugandan dodos (see 1979.20.174), that the local name for this type of object is teget, and they were used by men for sitting or sleeping. The hollowed base was sometimes used as a storage compartment for fat, which would be used to oil the headrest before using it (see entry for 1979.20.172) [RTS 22/08/2005].
Associated publications: Illustrated in colour as figure b on page 35 of A Shared Struggle: The People & Cultures of South Sudan, edited by Tim McKulka (no place [Juba]: Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports, Government of the Republic of South Sudan and the United Nations Mission in South Sudan, 2013). Caption (same page): 'Toposa wood headrest/stool'. [JC 28 2 2014]

Search terms: Furniture Dwelling, Headrest, Furniture