African Harp, help needed

Hello, I am living close to the old capitol Bonn, Germany. A high ranked diplomatic family, which spent many decades in different countries, passed away about 20 or 25 years. They gave this harp to their housemaid. Now also their housemaid passed away, and here it is
:

https://share-your-photo.com/08c28a314d/album

After searching the internet for more than 12 hours, my eyes are really burning, but I found only one piece, which looks very similar.
Here is the picture, I did a Google backwards picture search.
https://www.google.de/search?tbs=sb...TQiVR_1M30TkaZCByLLyaRmwsfyKczRths3-P0Q&hl=de

Unfortunately the link is obviously dead. When I click on it, I find no information. But under the picture is written something from " Bonham auction and Collection of Marc and Denyse Ginzberg"

What do I have here? Does someone have a Bonham catalogue? It looks, like not everything from the former auctions is online?
Thanks

 

I tried that, but even with the lowest resolution settings the pictures from my Huawei phone are to big.

 

Try emailing the pics to yourself as medium size.

Or try an online re-size app. Lots of people here use this site: https://compressimage.toolur.com/

 

here is the picture I found with Google picture search backwards. This is the only one, which looks similar. I spent a whole day and searched at least 10.000 pictures to find one like this

 

Thanks for the technical help...
Is it ivory? Normally ivory should be more white?

 

This pinterest link shows a few others. I realize that you often hit a dead-end on their site but thought at least others could view similar objects.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/556898310154281499/

 

Yes, I also checked all of (?) these Pinterest pictures, but haven't found any other ones like this. ( Split Bow, ivory? Two persons carved into the bow left men, and right woman...)

 

Scroll down to page 20 on this link for info and picture of harps & people playing them.

http://www.brunoclaessens.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Mangbetu-Bruno-Claessens-2011.pdf

 

Yrs, thanks, found this,too. But 99,9% of the harps look to different. The one which I found looks very similar. Information for this particular piece would be great. Thanks again

 

Welcome Robert.
Maybe @2manybooks or @komokwa can tell you more.

 

Thanks.

 

I believe it is Mangbetu, from the Congo, similar to this one at the Metropolitan Museum in NY:

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1978.412.412/

If you google "Mangbetu harp" you will find more.

Yours is very nicely carved, with the full figures on the neck (as opposed to just a head). It looks like the neck may be ivory, which was sometimes used for these harps. The diagnostic features of faint cross-hatching (known as schreger lines) will be most visible on the cross section on the top of the heads.

http://collections.nmmusd.org/Africa/5893/ArchedHarp5893.html
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/319553

 

Full description of varying types here:

http://music.africamuseum.be/instruments/english/congo drc/adungu.html

Yours doesn't look that old to me, but I may be wrong!

 

Because of the crazy exposure of my phone, everything looks younger. Last week I took a picture of my friends wife. She is 49, but on the picture she looks like 30. But only on the picture .

Thanks for the info.

 

It's really nice....& I can't add much more only to say ivory can be stained in many ways.....& handling is one of them.

Ow...that's a lot of great detailed information......nice find Birddog !!!

 

I found one, with a very similar bow in the Fowler Museum in Los Angeles

https://www.fowler.ucla.edu/product/x86-1851-harp/

 

I see no reason why yours is not....almost as old