Industrie des
Cafres du Sud-Est de l'Afrique
Snelleman and Muller 1891-92
This book
is as rare as stuffed Dodo birds. There is not a more important work on
South African and South East African art and beadwork than this. It will
only ever be in the libraries’ of a handful of collectors. We are advised
that only 100 copies were produced, 90 in folio form. These were produced for
royalty and for the most part remain in government or museum libraries.
Our extraordinarily beautiful copy was bound in Holland with a hard cover
from folio format. Not all pages have
been cut from their original fold over's.
Twenty five
chromolithographs delight the eye. Invented by Germans in 1796,
chromolithography stemmed from lithography. It replaced coloring prints in
by hand and in this case served as a replica of a real painting. Depending
on the number of colors present, a single chromolithograph could take months
to produce. To make what was once referred to as a “chromo”, a lithographer
gradually built and corrected the print to look as much as possible like the
original painting in front of him, sometimes using dozens of layers. There
is little doubt that this book was already priceless in its day.
Industrie des Cafres du Sud-Est de l'Afrique
Johannes François Snelleman
Between
1882 and 1883, Johannes François Snelleman and Hendrik Pieter Nicolaas
Muller travelled together through present day Zululand and Mozambique. Snelleman was the curator of the Africa collection at the
Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde in Leiden Holland. Hendrik Muller was the son of
wealthy Dutch merchants. On official business, Muller
travelled to Africa as the interim manager of Handels Compagnie Mozambique
(Trading Company Mozambique). The two visited all the trading posts and
establishments of the firm and at the end of the business trip, made an
additional extensive tour of Southern Africa. Together they collected a
large number of ethnographic objects and artefacts, from which this richly
illustrated study or art work was produced.
Snelleman
co-produced volumes two and three of Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch-Indië
(Encyclopedia the Netherlands Indies) and was the sole editor of volume
four. He and H. D. Benjamins published the Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch
West-Indië (Encyclopedia of the Dutch West Indies and together they started
the journal; De West-Indische Gids (West Indian Guide). He was appointed director of the Ethnologisch Museum in Rotterdam and the
Maritiem Museum 'Prins Hendrik'. The two unconnected museums were placed
under a single directorship in 1885. Snelleman kept this
position until early 1915, when he took his retirement due to ill-health.
Hendrik
Pieter Nicolaas Muller -
Explorer - Consul General Orange Free State
Muller
became the honorary Dutch consul general for Liberia in 1889. After a
fall out with his father, Muller left business and embarked in a
totally new career. He attended geography and ethnography lectures at the
universities of Heidelberg and Leipzig Germany, later completing a doctorate
at the University of Giessen. His thesis Land und Leute zwischen Zambezi
und Limpopo (Land and People between Zambezi and Limpopo) was
appreciated as an important piece of academic work. He held public lectures
throughout the Netherlands and Belgium with the African material
culture he and Snelleman had collected. Articles of the trip were published
in Dutch journals and newspapers, then collated into a book entitled Zuid-Afrika. This made him somewhat of a celebrity, as well as an expert on
South Africa and South East Africa.
Plate XVI
In 1898,
Muller attended the inauguration of President Kruger in Pretoria. In
Bloemfontein he struck up a friendship with the newly elected President M.
T. Steyn and his family. Once the Boer War broke out, Muller set up an
elaborate operation in the Hague to support the cause of the war for the
Orange Free State. He mobilized public support in the Netherlands, Germany,
the United States and organized public gatherings. Through his many contacts
with the European press - Muller saw to it that the Boer cause was
extensively covered in the newspapers. His office in The Hague was the hub
of diplomatic and consular activity in this period, with several secretaries
working continuously on the gathering of information and dealing with
correspondence. In 1901 Muller travelled to the United States to mobilize
support from President Theodore Roosevelt on behalf of the women and
children in the British concentration camps. From 1904 he supported
the Steyn family while they were in Europe for the President’s recovery of a
debilitating illness.
Between
1907 and 1909 Muller travelled through Asia, a journey that produced several
books and articles, including a two-part report of his travels. Muller also
published a scientific source publication on Cambodia and the earliest Dutch
presence in French Indochina. The French government rewarded him for it with
a knighthood in the Légion d'Honneur for the latter. The French colony Annam
made Muller a knight in the Order of the Dragon for his contributions to the
history of Vietnam. This Asian trip was comprehensive. He visited British
India and Ceylon, Burma, Malaysia and the Philippines and French Indochina,
travelled extensively through the Dutch East Indies, and returned via Japan,
Korea - where he had an audience with the last Korean emperor, Manchuria,
China, and Siberia. Muller's visit to Japan triggered a lively interest in
Holland and its economic development potential. Muller was well respected
for his lifetime work and extensively decorated by almost all the countries
he worked for or in, in many cases with the highest distinction. He was made
a Knight Grand Cross in military and civilian orders of Portugal, Liberia,
Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Czechoslovakia and the Netherlands, was commander
of the French Legion of Honour, and knight in orders of Liberia, Annam and
the Netherlands. In South Africa, his bust was placed in the University of
the Free State and Bloemfontein named a street after him.
and
through 