By Glen Joffe

A reminder about music and the rhythm of life from the Senufo People, Ivory Coast

It's a big world filled with countless things to collect. People collect airsickness bags and hotel soaps, toasters and snow globes, typewriters, skeleton keys, and paper labels from old fruit crates. There are clubs, conventions, and swap meets devoted to collecting everything from barbed wire to hubcaps, antique fishing lures, spark plugs, and stuffed animals. As off-putting as it may be, Guinness has certified a collection of belly-button lint. Yet, regardless of what’s collected, every collection makes the same argument: this deserves attention; and although what people collect may change, the impulse to collect does not. The inclination to find, compare, sort, and keep appears to be part of being human.

	A bronze serpent is imbuing a human with sacred powers; Dogon People, Mali

Eccentric collections sit at one end of the collecting spectrum. At the other end is the formal art world. Here, painting, sculpture, and works on paper, both decorative and meaningful, are predominant, but it is an ever-expanding world. What is common now, may be treasured tomorrow. Today, you can collect everything from Old Master’s paintings to Cubist masterworks and art from emerging artists as well as those already famous. You can also collect ethnographic art from every corner of the world, art that ranges from purely decorative to fully functional, items from various design movements, watches, pens, art glass, and unique items that defy categorization. In the formal art world, collecting is built upon appreciation, scholarship, connoisseurship, speculation and investment. It is a world presenting collectors with the opportunity to adorn their lives in attractive, meaningful ways, and it rewards those willing to exercise their eyes and intellect. This is the world Primitive occupies.

A couple drinks to celebrate their union; Dogon people, Mali

Existing within the formal art world is another universe called Global or World art. Authentic furniture, artifacts, textiles, and jewelry – from the easily affordable to the extraordinarily valuable – are the stars in this universe. They were made by peoples across Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas, and have one thing in common: none of them were made to hang in a traditional gallery. They were made to be used: worn to a ceremony, set within a home, carried to market, placed on a shrine, or handed to a daughter. Some things were made to be venerated. Others were made for purely utilitarian reasons.

The artisans who made these objects mostly go unnamed. In rare instances when the hand of the maker can be identified, prices soar, but ultimately, real value rests elsewhere: in the integrity of the form, the evidence of use, the weight of meaning a culture placed on a single object. Since its inception, Primitive has regularly traversed the territory of World art.

In the broadest sense, World art tends to categorize itself by point of origin. It is dominated by art from Asia, Oceania, Africa, and the Americas, and further sub-divided by type of object, the people who made it, and composition. Within World art, African art is the one category that has consistently found a place alongside modern art. In the first decade of the 20th century, Picasso, Matisse, and Derain encountered African masks and figures in Paris, and modern art changed direction. Cubism was born. Yet, the influence of African art never stopped. Artistic giants such as Modigliani, Brancusi, and Giacometti became obsessed with African art, and so did subsequent generations of artists. Today, African art has been fully accepted in the formal art world and can be found in museums, galleries, and auction houses worldwide, but this was not always the case.

	Miniature Bronze gold weight from Lake Chad

As a category, African art is a deep and wide subject; and initially the market did not treat all of it equally. For the most part it judged the art according to Western sculptural conventions, focusing on single free-standing objects big enough to put on pedestals or hang on walls such as masks, standing figures, reliquary guardians, and prestige objects. It favored minimalist, geometry-driven forms, and valued them for their aesthetics rather than their meaning or use. Intimate objects meant to be held, worn, or weighed were largely passed over with their significance diminished. Look closely and you can see, left in the wake of the market’s initial response was one of the richest bodies of work ever produced on the African continent: miniature bronzes.

Miniature bronze of Hippo represents river power; Akan people, Ghana

African Miniature Bronzes are not lesser objects. They are simply smaller in scale. Their forms typically mimic larger sculpture mostly made in wood, but also in terra cotta, stone, and bronze. They can defy categorization as pure sculpture since the category also includes adornment such as rings, charms, amulets, and bracelets, and functional objects such as gold weights, which comprise a collectible sub-category of miniatures. A petit box with an elephant atop its lid; a Hornbill with its wings spread riding the back of a horse; an abstract seated figure with pencil thick limbs that could be monkey or man; a serpent swallowing a human; a woman nursing a child; a ring topped with a big beaked bird; a fully abstracted human form with two triangular heads; a decorated square ingot; and a seated figure blowing a horn that is no bigger than a thumb only hint at the diversity found in the category of African Miniature Bronzes. Yet, diversity aside, all authentic miniatures share two common traits: how they were made, and their use by local populations.

	The bird equals rain, the horse, water from the Senufo People, Ivory Coast

Nearly every African Miniature Bronze is made by lost wax casting. In this process, a smith models the form in beeswax and then encases it in a clay mold. The mold is then fired so the wax runs out, and in turn, molten metal is poured into the void. When the metal hardens, the mold is broken to free the casting. There can be no second impression. Each piece is one-of-a-kind since the original, and the mold are destroyed in the casting. At monumental scale the process required a royal foundry, which produced commissioned works. At miniature scale it belonged to village smiths and itinerant casters who produced sculptures intended for those less privileged.

Food or destruction? A cast locust created for protection; Djenne, Mali

Authentic African Miniature Bronzes were meant to be valued, appreciated, traded, and even venerated because of what they signified. They were used by ordinary people, merchants, and many others of various rank and status. Common reasons for their creation included their use in commerce as both functional objects and trade goods, as teaching tools for moral instruction, and as protective objects. They were created for placement on shrines and altars and for ritual use, as tools for healing, fertility, and storytelling, and as status and prestige objects. Understandably, their small size meant they could be worn, transported, traded, and placed in many spots, both hidden and visible.

	Abstracted ancestor figure; Kulongo People, Ivory Coast

Perhaps the art market initially overlooked African Miniature Bronzes because of their scale. A miniature, even a small-scale masterpiece, will not command a room the same way as a feature painting on a wall or a much larger sculpture; and a market meant to reward pieces with great presence will typically undervalue objects meant to be savored, examined, and held. Attribution may have also played a role. Small castings can travel, get traded across ethnic lines, and may lack the clear stylistic signatures of their much larger counterparts. Yet, when it comes to African Miniature Bronzes, being overlooked has created an opportunity, for collectors can still build serious, coherent collections, often for the price of a single minor figure or mask.

A procession speaks to the cohesion of family life; Dogon people, Mali

African Miniature Bronzes contain larger worlds within smaller objects. A single bronze may typify a saying or a spirit, be required for ritual use, or be an essential part of a market transaction. It might depict a river crossing, a game among friends, a couple, a nursing mother, an animal, elder, or child. Regardless of what it depicts, when you closely examine an African Miniature Bronze its presence becomes amplified, and like so many other things at Primitive, it begins to speak. Put together a collection of them and a chorus soon declares, “Of all the things in this big world to collect, very few can offer such extreme rewards in so little space.”

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Visit us for a “Mini” Exhibition & Sale of African Miniature Bronzes at Primitive, 130 N Jefferson in Chicago on Saturday, November 14^th from 12-5 in the Five Elements Library. The entire collection of over 700 pieces can also be seen throughout the store.