Producer unknown to us
6 tea glasses
Africa, Mauritania, Nouakchott
Before 1984
Molded glass
Wolf-Dieter Seiwert (ethnologist) acquired these glasses during a research trip to Mauritania in 1984
Purchased by the museum from Seiwert in 1985
NAf 5790 a-f
Such tea glasses, probably imported from France, were sold at the markets of the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, in the 1980s.
Since 1973, Wolf-Dieter Seiwert (*1945) had worked as a curator for the Maghreb and the Sahara at the GRASSI Museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig and was part of a research focus group on pastoral nomadism in the deserts between West Africa and Central Asia. Together with the director, Lothar Stein, he visited Libya in 1981 and returned in 1988 for field research in a Berber community in western Libya. In 1984, he received an invitation for a month-long research stay in Mauritania. There, he pursued literary studies in Nouakchott and visited nomadic communities such as the Tandġa aš-Šarg in the southwest of the country.
Frank Usbeck