Kwere Medicine Gourd with Fiber Carrying Cord

According to Dr. Barbara Thompson, who conducted fieldwork among northeast Tanzanian communities still practicing traditional healing known as unganga, “notions of health and sickness” in these communities “include not only physical states of being, but encompass also social, economic, cultural, and religious conditions.” To address these conditions, traditional healers (wahanga) employ an equally multi-level approach through a combination of “herbal mixtures, spirit medicines, and spirit mediumship or possession to restore health and wellbeing.” Healers, Thompson notes, “seldom differentiated between decorating themselves, the spirits they embody, or their spirit-objects.” The healer and their medium were one and the same. To be effective, medicine requires the intervention of the spirits through the healer and his or her adorned vessels. Figurative stoppers imbue the gourd with beauty and intent. They seal the medicine in. They are the tool by which the medicine is dispensed; a mnemonic device by which one gourd (and its contents) is clearly differentiated from another. This example is a well used gourd that has developed a rich, darkened patina through handling and the saturation of its contents into its walls. The piece comes from a set of Kwere vessels presumably acquired together. Ex New England collection. $650

9″

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