Snuff Container; Nakana

Item

Title

Snuff Container; Nakana

Creator

Unrecorded

Description

Physical Description: Dark-coloured horn snuffbox with wooden stopper. There are three decorative vertical white strips attached to the sides each with three round dots. The shape follows the natural curve and taper of the horn, with the neck carved to form three rounded ridges.
Contextual Description: 01:53:53 [TN gestures with pen]SL: He was demonstrating how you would load your snuff box. You would have your snuff here in your hand, and this is where you hold your box, like that [holds pen at base of palm] and then you tap, like that the outer part of your hand.
RHH: You make a funnel with your hand. And did you say from Wildebeest horn and from cow horn as well?
SL: Yes

SL: The reason why people favour the opaque containers as opposed to transparent ones was that, if I have my snuff in here, and of course some people enjoyed snuff but they never wanted to pay for it, say ‘hey don’t you have any?’ and he said the guy would take out the snuff box, and open it and even like blow on it, and say ‘as you can hear its all empty’ because you can’t see through. They’d be like [mimes slapping bottle] ‘there’s nothing in here, nothing nothing.
…even later when people were using plastic containers, they would like the one with the dark colour that would not show the contents. Transcription by KL of MAC_BB_20190817_RPM3 SL Interview with Tshupo Ntono, Village Elder, Language: Setswana with English translations by SL, 2019

Publisher

Making African Connections

Date

Pre 1899

Type

PhysicalObject

Format

Whole: 110 mm x 42 mm

Identifier

R4007/48

Source

Collected by Reverend William Charles Willoughby, a Christian missionary, in what was then the Bechuanaland Protectorate (1885-1966). It is now the Republic of Botswana, having gained independence from Britain in 1966.
From 1889-92 Willoughby was pastor at Union Street Church, Brighton (now The Font pub). From 1893 to 1898 he worked for the London Missionary Society in Bechuanaland. He assembled this collection of objects during this period. This was a period of social and technological changes and these objects represent traditional lifestyles and skills, rather than the contemporary lives of the people Willoughby met.

Willoughby's collection was loaned to Brighton Museum in 1899 when he returned to the UK. The loan was converted into a donation in 1936, and accessioned as acquisition R4007.

Some objects were re-numbered with the WA (World Art) numbering system in the 2000s. These numbers have been reverted to the original R4007/... numbers where possible for consistency in 2019.
William Charles Willoughby
Botswana, Southern Africa, Africa
1893-1898

Space/Place

Botswana, Southern Africa, Africa
Cultural Group: Tswana

Rights

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International

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Title Alternate label Class
Snuff