Hello everyone,
I just bought these tables from a lovely lady.
She stated these were ordered by her father, made
in 1958 by a congolese carpenter.
The tables are all made of different woods, species
wich were present in Congo that time.
The workmanship is quite striking: the edges are sharp,
the underside beveled-rounded, the legs are all uniformely
wedge-shaped.
The style is modern too, a lot of furniture during the colonial period was decorated with motives referring to african symbols, even during the fifties.
I have a coffeetable (huge thing) in solid african hardwood, also imported from 'zaire' back in the days.
I also spoke with a man selling a lot of african things, his father was half african/half belgian, an artist working in a crossover style between Kuba and modernistic motives.
He had some striking vases in turned wenge-wood, finished with stylised Kuba motives.
I find these things all very fascinating, the history, the people, the exotic..
I would like to go further with these things. Do you know of any scource, artists, designers...?
Do you own an artwork or object yourself?
Yeah, wenge is one of them.
I think bubinga, padouk, sapele could be the other woods?
Prouvé (a little bit) and Pierre Jeaneret did work in respectively Africa & India.
Were there others active in exotic countries?
Did modernism reach these far away provinces and hidden lands? Inspire local craftsmen, like the one who made my tables (or stools, as SDR states)?
tropical modernism
1) really nice stools!
2) about architecture: at the university of ghent they have been doing some research on colonial modernist architecture in congo. some (often forgotten) but amazing buildings were built there. In the case of congo often by belgian architects (claude laurens, Roger Bastin,...) ( "http://kosubaawate.blogspot.be/2011_08_01_archive.html" )
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