Offered by Galerie Gabrielle Laroche
ORIGIN : KABYLIA
PERIOD : 19th CENTURY
Height : 100 cm
Length : 200 cm
Depth : 56 cm
Cedar wood
Good state of preservation
The chest stands high on its frame extended as feet. The front part of the chest is entirely ornate.
On the legs of the chest double-tooth ornamented strips frame rosettes and bubble-ended lines.
Sides are strengthen by wood bars between the lateral stile.
Looking at the human habitat history chest must have been with no doubt the first furniture. Historical testimonies stay mute about the use of chest in northern Africa though.
Bearing a long lost tradition for the cities but still alive in countryside, the chest has a privileged position in the house.
For a long time we have linked in northern Africa geometric ornamentation and Islamic ban of human depiction. The current research tells us the use of geometric patterns appears sooner than the Islamic faith and we can observe rectilinear ornaments on 10 000 years old Caspian stones or ostrich eggs. Thank to Henriette Camps-Fabrer’s work we know Neolithic Maghreb and Sahara people mastered all the basic elements of geometric style.
Rosette has a en especially major place in the chests ornaments but rarer on rustic ones.
Greek-cross is very used. With equal branches and always small this also called Kassite cross is rarely engraved but carved or digged in the panel following a grid pattern made with a dry point.
Bubble-ended cross bears a circle or marbles at the end of each of its branches. Usually it is framed by one or to four grooves.
This piece of furniture mingles the Christian-like cross with the Islamic-like wheel here as rosettes. Symbol of the sun the wheel appears 2 500 years before Christian era as part of chariots whose Sumerian name evokes the link with sky and earth complex. In the Islamic sphere circle always stands as celestial symbols. For instance God’s throne is depicted with a circle at its base and the seven heavens appears as a round tent. Meister Eckhart talked about human life as a point moving on a spinning wheel.
