Senufo - Norsunluurannikko (Ei pohjahintaa)

A female Senufo Rhythm pounder - called Débéle - Northern Ivory Coast, - uprising from a cylindrical, oval, base with straight, shortened legs, the arms carved beside a slender body with a small pointed navel with scarification carvings around it, wide shoulders, small pendular breasts with scarifications on them, the columnar neck supporting a triangular head with a slender nose, small round mouth, small coffee shaped eyes; wearing a domed, single crested coiffure; dark, aged patina with significant signs of a touch patina; crack next to the right breast(documented in following pictures). Provenance of Amadou Bouaflé, Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

"In the mid- to late twentieth century, communities displayed pombibele as static works of sculpture and animated them in performance. The figures sometimes stood on the ground during a ceremony for a deceased poro elder or larger funerary ceremonies dedicated to all the deceased elders in a community. On other occasions, poro initiates carried pombibele as they walked, tapping the large figures on the ground. Rarer sculptures include the much admired large birds, reproductions of which today fill West African tourist markets. By the time Senufo arts captured scholarly attention in the West at the beginning of the twentieth century, artists and patrons had already created a wealth of forms to assert diverse local identities." Source: Met Museum, NY

According to Gottschalk, who tried to make a typolgy of the Senufo Déblé, these exemplares would probably be submitted to the group of the kulibèlè and not the fonombèlè.
"Während die ersteren (fonombèlè) entweder wegen mangelnder Fähigkeit zu feinerer Arbeit (the fonombèlè are the blacksmiths in the Senufo society) oder als bewußt eingesetztes Stilmittel die klaren und wuchtigen Formen, die kontrastierenden Waagerechten und Senkrechten weitgehend so beließen, wie sie bei der Festlegung der Proportionen entstanden waren, bemühten sich die kulibèlè (the traditional carver) um ein weiches Ineinanderfließen der Körperteile, soweit sie nicht den Stil ihrer älteren Brüder in ihre Arbeit aufnahmen oder ihn mehr oder weniger kopierten." Source: Burkhard Gottschalk
More realistic sounds the opinion of Glaze, who described the difficulties of a stylistic typology according to both ethnic groups after she did fieldwork around kufulo (region of Dikodougou). Anita J. Glaze, 81.