SAPI SALTCELLARSThe Portuguese commissions included del-
icate spoons, forks, and elaborate containers usually referred to as salt-
cellars, as well as boxes, hunting horns, and knife handles. Salt was a
valuable commodity, used not only as a flavoring but also to keep food
from spoiling. Costly saltcellars were prestige items that graced the ta-
bles of the European elite (for example,FIG. 22-51). The Sapi export
items were all meticulously carved from elephant tusk ivory with re-
fined detail and careful finish. Ivory was plentiful in those early days
and was one of the coveted exports in early West and Central African
trade with Europe. The Sapi export ivories, the earliest examples of
African tourist art, are a fascinating hybrid art form.
Art historians have attributed the saltcellar shown here (FIG.
15-14), almost 17 inches high, to the Master of the Symbolic
Execution,one of the three major Sapi ivory carvers during the pe-
riod. This saltcellar, which depicts an execution scene, is one of his
best pieces and the source of his modern name. A kneeling figure
with a shield in one hand holds an ax (restored) in the other hand
over another seated figure about to lose his head. On the ground be-
fore the executioner, six severed heads (FIG. 15-14) grimly testify to
the executioner’s power. A double zigzag line separates the lid of the
globular container from the rest of the vessel. This vessel rests in
turn on a circular platform held up by slender rods adorned with
crocodile images. Two male and two female figures sit between these
rods, grasping them. The men wear European-style pants and have
long, straight hair. The women wear skirts, and the elaborate raised
patterns on their upper chests surely represent decorative scars.
The European components of this saltcellar are the overall de-
sign of a spherical container on a pedestal and some of the geomet-
ric patterning on the base and the sphere, as well as certain elements
of dress, such as the shirts and hats. Distinctly African are the style of
the human heads and figures and their proportions, the latter
skewed here to emphasize the head, as so often seen in African art.
Identical large noses with flaring nostrils, as well as the conventions
for rendering eyes and lips, characterize Sapi stone figures from the
same region and period. Scholars cannot be sure whether the
African carver or the European patron specified the subject matter
and the configurations of various parts, but the Sapi works testify to
a fruitful artistic interaction between Africans and Europeans dur-
ing the early 16th century.
The impact of European art became much more pronounced in
the late 19th and especially the 20th centuries. These developments
and the continuing vitality of the native arts in Africa are examined
in Chapter 34.404 Chapter 15 AFRICA BEFORE 180015-14Master of the Symbolic Execution,saltcellar, Sapi-
Portuguese, from Sierra Leone, ca. 1490–1540. Ivory, 1 47 – 8 high.
Museo Nazionale Preistorico e Etnografico Luigi Pigorini, Rome.
The Sapi saltcellars made for export combine African and Portuguese
traits. This one represents an execution scene with an African-featured
man, who wears European pants, seated among severed heads.1 in.