This zoomorphic snuff staff embodies a fineness of carving and multiplicity of features that aggregate seamlessly to produce a complex and vital form. Exceptional in its pristine high-tech quality, it is fashioned to give the illusion that the whole contains movable parts: knobs to twirl, fluted bands to turn, cogs to move, swivel and tighten. Used as a cache for snuff, this was a prestigious accessory that complimented its owner’s appearance and enhanced their status, especially on public occasions.

The mechanical inferences are not surprising, given the rapid industrialization of the Colony of Natal in the 19th century. The population was increasingly exposed to an influx of machinery and military equipment. Soldiers with their guns, binoculars, buckles, and wagons would have been commonplace. By 1860, the first 1.86 miles (3

km) of railway was built in Durban and, by 1912, it had expanded to join other rail systems throughout southern Africa. Increasingly, the African population were passengers on trains, working in mines, and seconded to the army and police force, exposed to a visual language shaped by industrialized technology and its portent for power.

However, the metaphoric language of this snuff staff is not just industrial. Its relational dynamics have been set up so that the mechanical works in concert with the anthropomorphic and the zoomorphic, presenting the viewer with visual conundrums. The two ‘ears’ projecting from the sides of the head seem to sport the austere, disk-shaped wooden ear plugs popular in the region in the 19th century. The raised band of grooved and bumped designs that crests the ‘head,' terminating at the ‘forehead’ and the nape of the finial, hints at a neatly-coiffured hairstyle. This raised band, often composed only of carefully carved rows of pyramidical bumps (amasumpa), is present on some items from 19th-century KwaZulu-Natal, including a carved cup in the Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology in Cambridge collected by Henry Bulwer; on two staffs with rounded finials (iwisa) in the Field Museum Chicago, acquired from Eduard Remenyi; and one in the British Museum said to come from Ladysmith. Something of the fineness of the carving and silky patina of the snuff staff discussed here is also evident in the example in the British Museum.

The double helix of the shaft punctuated top and bottom with ridged ‘collets,' suggests an imaginary rotation in opposite directions, creating the torsion that shaped the familiar spiraled feature seen on some staffs and spoon handles from the region. The fluted rings of the ‘collets’ also allude to metal couplings that could be tightened or loosened, ‘hypothetically’ allowing the staff to telescope in and out – a case of skeumorphism taking its cues from an early industrial age. Even the ‘snout’ of the finial, with its four bands of parallel grooves, suggest that it can be rotated and swiveled within the ‘illusory’ casing at the pinnacle of the shaft.

Two elegant horns, secured to the staff finial with a pre-mass production metal screw, curve gracefully up and back, giving the staff a distinctly zoomorphic quality. These also serve as two small legs that support the staff when it lies horizontally with its snout facing upwards. Of particular interest, the staff in the British Museum, mentioned above and said to come from Ladysmith, also has a torso with legs added to the shaft, held in place with two neat metal pins and some wirework.

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