Tits and Pricks

About Hermione Waterfield
and the Creation of the ‘Tribal Art’ Department at Christie’s

May 02, 2018 By: Adenike Cosgrove

Hermione Waterfield joined Christie’s auction house in 1961, working closely with William Fagg as Director. Together, they created the dedicated ‘Tribal Art’ department in 1975. In this interview, Hermione explains her background in African art, how she came to create the ‘Tribal Art’ department, and her thoughts on the evolution of the market. She also answers some of your most burning questions.

Buckle your seat-belts for this no-holds-barred interview with an industry titan!

1974, when Hermione was made Director at Christie’s

Tell us a little about yourself. How did you discover African art?


Well, the good Lord has always pushed me hither and yon, and by chance I met William Fagg at the Musée de l'Homme, Paul Tishman Collection in May 1966. I knew nothing about African art but Margaret Webster Plass cornered me. She asked me why I was there, and learning that I was from Christie’s, she said to William, “Bill, you’ve got to help this lady set up a ‘Tribal Art’ department in Christie’s because we need an alternative to Sotheby’s. You and Hermione will create it.” Margaret Webster Plass was a little American lady from Philadelphia, nothing would gainsay her. She fired from the hip.

It was all fortuitous. An American friend of mine once said, “it was just as well because you bring a different aspect to it. Whereas if you’d been in an art history course you’d be in a groove,” and the one thing about me is that I’m not in any sort of groove. I had extra rows to hoe because I had to fish out and deduce things by myself.

But on the other hand I really recommend that people do their own research. Don’t follow blindly. Even if you hear from someone you admire, check it out yourself because then you’ll know why you like something. Otherwise you’re just going to mimic or follow the fashions. I mean sometimes even Bill and I used to lock horns.

So I met Bill in 1966 and we went back to Christie’s to discuss how we could include African art at the auction house. Bill would come in once or twice a month to see what had been delivered.

I remember once, in 1969, he came in and there was a Benin head, with the tusk! And he said “oh my God”. The family that owned it hadn’t a clue what it was and it was just sitting in the greenhouse. A friend of theirs was a policeman and so he said “look I don’t think it should be here, why don’t you check it out”. And instead of taking it to Sotheby’s or to the British Museum (BM), they took it to Christie’s for some reason. Just the luck of the draw you see.

There were only about 40 lots in the sale. The whole sale made £26,000 but the Benin head alone made £21,000! That was a record at the time. The previous Benin head sold for £10,000 and here we were with £21,000.

The head now sits in the Benin Kingdom Gallery of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Edo Commemorative Head of a King

Ẹni tí kò mọ ọba ní ńfọba ṣeré
"Only a person who does not know the king trifles with the king"

Edo Uhunmwun Elao (Ancestral Memorial Oba Head), Nigeria
© Museum of Fine Arts. L-G 7.11.2012
Robert Owen Lehman Collection

Country: Nigeria
Ethnic Group: Edo
Object: Uhunmwun Elao (Ancestral Memorial Oba Head)
Age: Late 16th Century
Materials: Copper Alloy, Iron
Dimensions: Height = 9.5 inches
Provenance: 1968, L. Hope, England; December 3, 1968, Hope and others sale, Christie’s, London, lot 76, to Alexander Martin for £ 20,000. 2012, promised gift of Robert Owen Lehman to the MFA.

You’ve mentioned William Fagg a few times now, for those of us that don’t know who he is, can you please introduce him to us?

William [Bill] Fagg was the African specialist and curator (later the Keeper of Ethnography in 1969-74) at the Department of Ethnography of the BM (1938-74), which he joined after the war. His mother told him that he’d be a genius in anything and so he became a genius of African art. He was completely focused.

Then Margaret (Margot) Webster Plass came along with her husband, Webster Plass, to ask Bill’s opinion on what they had collected over the years in Africa. They also asked for his advice on what to collect next. They really appreciated Bill, Webster realised he was a really special man. So they not only bought things with their money on Bill’s advice to give to the museum but Margot also took Bill with her on a couple of expeditions—one to Cameroon to find the Bangwa and another to Mali.

What Bill Fagg did for me, which was wonderful, was to introduce me to other specialists. I would never have gotten so close to Marie Louise Bastin if not for Bill. I spent nights with her and Bill talking about her Chokwe excursions. Louis Perrois is another I’d spend hours with. Being able to know people like that was incredible.

Hermione Waterfield on Mumuye Figures and Punu Masks

I never went to Africa with Bill sadly, but he encouraged me to go to Nigeria. I stayed in Nigeria for three weeks, visiting first the National Museum in Lagos and then travelling north to Kaduna and Jos. In Jos, Angela Rackham took me to the depot and in there were all the Mumuye figures stacked up on shelves. She said “shhh” and in the silence you could hear “tick tick tick tick”. You could hear the bugs chewing the wood!

This is why a lot of the patina on old Mumuye figures is redone because they’ve had to fill up all the bug holes. Sadly there was one at auction that belonged to somebody I knew. Everyone was saying it was fake but it wasn’t, it had been repatinated, probably in Africa when all the bug holes had been filled. The problem was they wouldn’t come clean about it. If they had, it would have been proof that the piece was indeed old and true.

There are some Mumuye figures that were made for us because they ran out of course. In the mid-70s every American collector had to have at least one, if not half a dozen Mumuye figures. There weren’t enough to go round so they just made some more. They ‘replaced’.

They are rather like Punu okuyi masks. There are a lot of ‘replacement’ Punu masks too. Bill said that really old Punu masks have got to have a pith hole at the top to the mask. There should be a hole which goes all the way through the tree from which the masks are made.

Eket objects were also being faked in ‘68 and ‘69 because they ran out. Every shop in Paris was filled with Igbo, Ibibio and Eket artworks. And the Eket adapted, they weren’t always fake. The Francois Neyt book on the Roger F. Azar collection [L’Art Eket: Collection Azar] shows some of the adaptations. As an example, some older Eket masks had blank lateral panels which were later engraved to ‘enhance’ them for the market.

Hermione Waterfield with Werner Gillon (middle)—collector, dealer, and author of 'Collecting African Art'.

“Of course you love it, it was made for you!”
William ‘Bill’ Fagg

Can you describe some of the major pieces you've handled during your career?

Ah well of course THE major one is the Chokwe Chibinda Ilunga Katele.

The lovely photographer Werner Forman, he came to visit me at Christie’s. He asked if we had anything that he could photograph because he’d run out of things in London that he really want to photograph. I said, “Werner it’s bare, the next sale is pathetic.” This was in ‘78. However I told him to wait by the storage locker while I went to fetch the key to let him in, miracles can happen and he may find something on the shelves.

I came back and there was Werner, stood still at the doorway, staring into the locker. I asked if he was all right and he replied, “you’ve got nothing? Look!” And there was Chibinda Ilunga Katele, that wonderful one at the Kimbell Art Museum in Dallas Fort Worth. It was just the best.

I said, “wow, I wonder where that came from” and looked it up. It had come from a Portuguese lady. Her uncle was an artist, who had friends in Angola but no one knows how he got the piece—the exact provenance in Angola is unknown. Her family was planning a wedding and needed to raise money. The person at Christie’s that originally took it in had told her that it would probably make a couple of hundred pounds but certainly not enough to pay for a wedding. So the lady said she’d take it to Sotheby’s. However, our foreign liaison knew me and was there when the conversation was taking place. She begged the lady to wait until I saw it and that if I didn’t like it, she’d personally take it to Sotheby’s herself. She had the instinct that it was something special.

And so, Werner took a beautiful photograph of it and it entered our catalogue. Unfortunately, we don’t have the negative anymore—management at the time didn’t want “tits and pricks” in the gallery.

The lady that owned the figure said she only needed £20,000 so we kept the estimate low. The reserve was £20,000, the figure made £200,000. It made the record! I called her to tell her what it’d sold for and she said, “excuse me, can you repeat the figures and put the commas in?” It was so sweet, they were absolutely thrilled.

That was a very exciting thing because it came in as nothing and turned out to be the prince, Chibinda Ilunga!

Chokwe Chibinda Ilunga Royal Ancestor Figure

Ilunga, Son of a Great Luba Chief

 Chokwe Chibinda Ilunga (Royal Ancestor Figure), Angola
© Kimbell Art Museum. AP 1978.05
Chokwe Chibinda Ilunga (Royal Ancestor Figure), Angola
© Kimbell Art Museum. AP 1978.05

Country: Angola
Ethnic Group: Chokwe
Object: Chibinda Ilunga (Royal Ancestor Figure)
Age: Mid-19th Century
Materials: Wood, Hair, Hide
Dimensions: Height = 16 inches
Provenance: Fred Abecassis, probably Angola, before 1900; private collection from 1940; (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, Ltd., London, 13 June 1978, no. 254); (Walter Randel, New York); purchased by Kimbell Art Foundation, Fort Worth, 1978.

There is a bit of a trend growing of collectors buying African art as an investment, the ‘trophy hunters’. Do you see that too and what would your advice be to those kinds of collectors?

Unfortunately people have, since 1967, bought art as an investment. This is a bad idea because it’s subject to fashion. You cannot blame the piece if it suddenly goes out of fashion and a naught drops off.

For example, when the Iranian Shah was around, lacquered pen boxes leapt from £300 to £3,000 in a couple of years. Then the Shah was deposed and the boxes suddenly went back to £300. It wasn’t the fault of the pen boxes, it was the fault of the people who were buying them. And so people cannot blame the pieces.

I remember that George, who worked on Wall Street, once said that any investment should be like a bunch of twigs, you must not have one branch, you must have a bunch of twigs. If a couple break, you’ve still got the rest of the bunch to prop up the bundle. You never ever go into one thing only, really spread it and then you’ve got a chance to make it on the right side.

If you want to buy something it’s always very expensive but if you want to sell it, suddenly everyone says well… there’s a hole here, and the patina’s off there, it’s been redone, and we’re not so sure about the provenance.

So never ever buy art purely as an investment. You’ve got to buy because you really want to have it at home. And if you one day find that it doesn’t ring true, then swallow it and think of the other twigs in the bundle. Keep it at home to remind you of what it looks like and on what to concentrate.

How has the London scene changed since you founded the Tribal Art department at Christie’s?

A desert! You need good dealers for collectors and you need good collectors for dealers. The whole thing’s just died off in London. We used to have great dealers like John Hewett, Philip Goldman, and Lance Entwistle. The Sainsburys died, Hewett died. Sadly all the great collectors have gone! London, no England is a desert. It’s curious, it’s a chicken and egg situation. But there are no eggs to hatch. No hens to sit on them.

The market was broader based and London was definitely a centre. But so was New York. There are very few dealers left in New York. They’re all now in Paris and Brussels. Paris has become the centre of the African art market.

It really is important to have a discussion group, a group of people you can trust, learn from, and share with. There used to be little collector circles and wonderful discussion groups. The Parcours des Mondes art fair is trying now to have discussion panels. That helps. But it’s all in French. Bobby Entwistle and I were going to try a little thing here in the UK but we didn’t know who to start with. Where are they? Where are the collectors? How do you kick it off?

Next, is a question from a young African art historian, Ilaria Pol Bodetto. She asks, “I would like to ask Hermione how the figure of the Tribal Art collector has changed over the years. What kind of people used to attend Christie's auctions back in the sixties, and who can we encounter now? Is it possible to trace a changing in collectors' tastes and in the way they relate to non-Western art objects?”

In the ‘60s, there was a varied mix of people because prices ranged from £10 to the thousands but not hundreds of thousands. So you got all sorts of people who were interested in the shapes. A lot of artists feel that they can’t afford the art anymore. An artist with moderate means like Josef Herman, used to buy things from top dealers like Ralph Nash because they didn’t like small figures. Josef made his collection of small figures because of this trend. Ralph would sell off the big important things, he’d sell the few plums to some big collectors and museums but then throw the crumbs to people like artists. There doesn’t seem to be that philosophy anymore, that you can throw some crumbs to younger or less established collectors.

And, of course, the auction rooms aren’t as full as they used to be. Collectors sit behind their desks or the internet now. Telephone bids means you can get bids direct from collectors all over the world. But when bidding with someone in Melbourne for example, it just takes forever for the signal to come back, 15 seconds in some cases. This is a long time when you’re sitting in a room waiting for the auction to go on. So the internet and the phone have really changed the auction room a lot. The management of the major auction houses stipulate that the department should not include items for less than £5,000 and if they go lower, it has to be within a worthwhile group (i.e. make up for it elsewhere).

In addition, collectors are scared. On the whole, estimates now start at a couple of thousand if not five thousand. In the old days it used to start at £20 or £50 and there used to be things you could still buy at that price because you’d get a group of objects in. The sales were longer because you had all this stuff, all this padding. So you know, it has changed drastically in the last 10 years. Which is sad because that doesn’t encourage your young collector.

People are still finding things however in car boot sales but that is such luck. About once a year something great comes out but its now snapped up and often for small sums before it rapidly changes hands.

Now taste is total fashion. Like the Mumuye craze in the ‘70s. The Fangs were the hot ticket 20 years ago but now it’s more a mixture of strange things—Cameroon and strange shapes.

We have another question from Olivier. He asks, "I would like to know if this label is one from Leon Underwood?"


I don’t know if Leon Underwood had a label. I have no idea! That’s not in any of Leon Underwood’s books. I don’t remember ever seeing a Leon Underwood label.

That’s a Teke and the patina is not very English. I think it’s unlikely to be an Underwood. I don’t say definitely it isn’t but I think it would be extremely unlikely that it would be a polished piece if it was an Underwood.

And to close, what advice do you have for collectors of African art?


Only buy what you like and check it out every which way first. You should connect with people that seem to make sense. And always discuss things with other collectors and anthropologists. Make friends so you can have good discussions.

With all the fabulous copies, I’m just very glad that I lived when I did. But if you like something buy it. Research comparative prices. And if you discover that your piece is a copy, recognise that fact and then think, you can probably perfectly well live with it.

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