1926.17.1

Collection type

Object

Description

Headdress of coiled basketry covered with cocks' feathers. [LM 'DCF 2004-2006 What's Upstairs?' 6/12/2005]

Geographical reference

Uganda

Africa > Eastern Africa > Uganda

Cultural groups

Lango

Person

Field collector Jack Herbert Driberg

PRM source Jack Herbert Driberg

Date / Period

Date made: Before 1926

Date collected

By 1926

Acquisition information

Donated: 1926

Materials and processes

Material Plant Fibre, Material Bird Feather, Process Coiled, Process Basketry

Dimensions

Height: max 210 mm, Diameter: max 280 mm

Object numbers

Accession number: 1926.17.1

Research and responses

Andrew Gosler and Juan Gonzalez, during a research visit, agreed that the feathers were likely cock's feathers. [ROH 07/03/2012]

Driberg discusses this type of headdress in his book on the Lango of Uganda, as a style which he believed had developed early in the nineteenth century: 'The hair of the head was allowed to grow long ... and into it were woven, aided by a plastering of clay and chalk, cock’s feathers built up into the appearance of a busby. This busby was called kono, and walo was the term used of dressing the hair in this fashion. This was more particularly, but not exclusively, a war head-dress...As hairdressing of this nature occupied several hours (and entailed a fee of one pot of beer and one chicken to the barber), the tok or the kono were not undone for months at a time... Subsequently it was found that the tok and the kono ... look almost as well even if detached from the head, and they were frequently removed by carefully shaving the hair close to the head, the hair thus forming a felt lining to the ... feather busby. The most modern development is a round wicker-worn tok ... into which the wearer's hair is worked so compactly and neatly as to form a closely woven felt cover ... This fashion of headgear does not date back for more than ten years' (J.H. Driberg, 1923, The Lango, p. 59 - 60). Note that Driberg only mentions the wickerwork frame in relation to the tok (a term used both for the crown of the head, and another style of hairdressing in which beads are threaded onto the hair). In his dictionary at the back of this volume, kono is defined as: 'Feathers of birds, feather busby'.

A type of headdress worn by the Acholi may also be related, in which a wickerwork frame that fits over the top of the head and supports a large mass of long, curving ostrich feathers (M. Trowell and K.P. Wachsmann, 1953, Tribal Crafts of Uganda, p. 195, 197, and pls 46H and 48B) [RTS 14/6/2004].

Search terms: Clothing Headgear, Ornament, Basketry, Headdress, Headgear, Head Ornament