A Ndebele Doll

With a full wooden-core covered with glass-beadwork in primary colors. A craft applied by the NDEBELE woman. The NDEBELE people live in the hinterland of South Africa. This doll was bought in 1956. Height ± 30–35 cm. (Old collection R. Corens) The original Ndebele doll was a sort-sized figure almost as large as high. She represented the Ndebele ideal of female beauty. Such dolls were usually presented to nubile girls for keepsake and as fertility charm or jimat. Sometimes two dolls were given and the young girls had them stuck at the front of their beaded girdle. They kept the dolls, took care of them like they were babies and this for a whole year long. This continuous carrying of the two mock-babies would guarantee a sure and abundant motherhood for the girls. Remarkable, these same dolls were at the same time used by the SANGOMAS (soothsayer) during his magical practices. Almost nothing remains of the traditional beadwork of before 1880. Maybe that the actual beaded dolls do go back on old models. What’s for sure, is that the fat beaded-doll type was replaced around 1940 by much slimmer samples of this particular bead-craft. For the lovers of the NDEBELE bead-craft, was the discovering of a beaded BARBIE doll at a local market, a sad surprise. Though, the last news about these somewhat un-American Barbies was; that they weren’t a big success in South Africa.