Congolese Wood Textile Hanger

Layers, bands, crosshatching, and a small knob at the tip: the finial does all the talking.

Cloth was central to dress, ceremony and exchange in Central Africa, and wooden implements for working with it often carried a carved head. This textile hanger, carved in the Republic of Congo in the 20th century, is topped with a layered, rounded finial, a ringed collar below. The long shaft, forty-two and a half inches, tapers evenly to a point.

The wood is mottled, reddish-brown and paler tan, lightly worn.

An air of the scepter about it. Nobody need mention it.