• Kwere / Zaramo, Tanzania

• Wood, natural fiber

• Early 20th Century

• 8 x 2.5 in./ 20.5 x 6.5 cm

The artistic output of the Kwere features the omnipresence of the female form. Small, stylized, truncated dolls known as Mwana Hiti are played with by boys and girls alike. Mwana Hiti dolls depict a highly-abstracted female with a coiffure separated into two large crests. This abstract female figure also decorated containers, staffs, zithers, calabashes, and even thrones. This type of container was used for many items: medicine, pigments, tobacco, snuff, gunpowder, etc (Bacquart, The Tribal Arts of Africa, 1998).

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