Anuak Headrest

Branch-style headrests are widely distributed throughout southern Sudan, northern Uganda and northwest Kenya. They appear in historical photographs of the Nuer and Larim ethnic groups and were field recorded with notes among the Nyangatom, Kaara, Anuak, Banna, Chai, Karamojong, Pokot and Rendille. The slender cross bar, uninhibited use of the crossing legs at one end, and light carver’s touch led me to the conviction that this headrest is from South Sudan, likely Anuak. A similar sensibility can be found in a headrest in the University of Oxford’s Pitt Rivers museum collection, field collected among the Anuak by English anthropologist Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard around 1935. This example is clearly younger, but its collection date is unknown. Ex California collection. $400

6″

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