Bamenda Ceremonial Shaman's Tunic

Healers collect things. This one wore the collection.

The Bamenda peoples of the Cameroon Grassfields made this ceremonial tunic in the 20th century from cloth, raffia, leather, bone and wood. Garments like it were worn by ritual specialists and healers, their surfaces gathering charms and medicinal attachments over time.

The dark, sleeveless body is nearly covered: small horns, carved wooden plaques, bone fragments, coiled fiber rings, woven pouches, round seed-like forms, tufts of pale fiber, all bound on in dense layers. Forty-six inches high, deeply encrusted in browns and blacks.

Part sculpture, part clothing. Wholly unembarrassed.