Snuff Container; Nakana

Title

Creator

Unrecorded

Description

Physical Description: A small horn bottle-shaped snuff container. The body is tapered in towards the top and decorated with eight vertical inlays of copper wire and two light coloured bosses. These two bosses are decorated with lines and dots. The colours of this snuff container are green and black.

Contextual Description: 01:56:02 The original name for snuff box nakana which means a small horn and then like he just explained it means that the material used was a horn. You cut the horn, what do you end up with? A small horn, which is nakana, clearly explained.Then later on people took to using other containers, maybe something that contained a powder puff or other face cream, little tins, this is what was later called [doesi?]
Before we had nakana and then when tins were introduced people then started calling this [doesi?] because that’s what you call a sort of flattish tin with a lid.
We were both remarking on the finish [of the snuff boxes] and the you know, tidiness, [as if] people were using machines but they were using hands.
RHH: They’re very tactile little objects, they’re very pleasing to hold.
SL: Yeah. Transcription by KL of MAC_BB_20190817_RPM3 SL Interview with Tshupo Ntono, Village Elder, Language: Setswana with English translations by SL, 2019

Rachel Heminway Hurst

Kathleen Lawther

Tshepo Skwambane

Scobie Lekhuthile

Publisher

Making African Connections

Date

Pre 1899

Type

PhysicalObject

Format

Whole: 82 mm x 45 mm

horn; metal copper;

Identifier

R4007/50

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.

This object was on display in the exhibition 'Missionary Collectors' in the James Green Gallery of World Art, from July 2004 to January 2005.

William Charles Willoughby

Botswana, Southern Africa, Africa

1893-1898