Abbia game tokens, Cameroon - Lot 123

Lot n° 123
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Estimation :
450 - 500 EUR
Abbia game tokens, Cameroon - Lot 123
Abbia game tokens, Cameroon 19th - early 20th century Adzap tree seeds, pigments H. 3 to 4 cm Bibliography: *Cyrille Bela, "L'art des abbia : une forme d'expression sculpturale du pays pahouin", Afrique : Archéologie & Arts, 4 | 2006. For the people of southern Cameroon, luck in the game of abbia rests on these small tokens carved from the stones of a fruit. On the smooth, polished surface of the halved seeds, a miniature world of zoomorphic, anthropomorphic and geometric representations is carved. Birds are a recurring theme in abbia iconography. They can be identified by their physical attributes - the long beak of the hornbill, the spread wings of the eagle... The simple rules of the abbia game, based on the principle of heads or tails, contrast with the refinement of the tokens, whose highly allegorical forms and symbols offer a "glimpse into the mental universe of the artist and, by extension, that of the group to which he belonged "*, in the context of the magical and divinatory practices in which these tokens were used.
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