Throwing knife and prestige object "za", before 1898

wood, steel, copper inlay, hand-written inscription "Congo WBSTR. 1898", numbered "4697" and labelled "75824" (M. Willborg)
Present object was published as a drawing by W.D. Webster in 1898 (Webster, Illustrated Catalogue of Ethnographical Specimens, European and Eastern Arms and Armour, Prehistoric and Other Curiosities, Vol 2 [June 1898], No. 2064, ill. 52).
Webster was born the son of a potato dealer in Greenwich in 1868 and was initially employed as a glass painter in Lancaster. In 1891 he married Agnes Harrison in Kendal.
He started collecting in the early 1890s and became a dealer in ethnographic antiques. Webster acquired the objects primarily when travelling through England from private collectors and in auction houses.
In 1895 he began to publish catalogues in which each object was meticulously depicted as a lithographic drawing based on his own designs. These were probably the first illustrated sales catalogues for ethnography, which are still considered important evidence of African, American and Pacific art and material culture. Of particular importance are his records of Benin art from the British punitive expedition of 1897.
Webster is said to have held exhibitions in London's Earls Court district, which both serve to provide information about foreign cultures and to promote sales.
A shortage of money and probably also the separation from his wife are said to have led to the fact that in 1904 he sold his entire collection at Stevens, the then leading London auction house for ethnographic and natural history objects. His collection was classified as "probably the best outside of a museum".
Webster died in Effingham in 1913 and it is said that he is buried in the green cemetery at Kensal.
L: 58 cm, L: 22,8 inch
Provenance:
William Downing Webster (1863-1913), Bicester, United Kingdom, 1898
Lieutenant-General Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers (1827-1900), Farnham, Dorset, United Kingdom (acquired in 1898)
Max Willborg, Stockholm, Sweden (1975)
Peter Willborg, Stockholm, Sweden (2014)
Published in:
W. D. Webster, Illustrated Catalogue of Ethnographical Specimens, European and Eastern Arms and Armour, Prehistoric and Other Curiosities, Vol 2 (June 1898), No. 2064, ill. 52 (drawing); Pitt-Rivers, "Catalogue of his Second Collection, 1882-1898", Vol.5, pl 1728 [ID 94540]
Lit.: Elsen, Jan, Tribal Arms Monographs, Vol I, No 1, Brussels 1996, p. 62
Condition Report: See description