With its dark, lustrous surface and its elegant amphora-like shape, this particularly large carved wooden snuff container is one of the most elegant of its type. The surface is divided up into three sections: the lower third, rising from its pointed base, is covered with a finely grooved and ridged vertical design. The middle third, which contains a small loop allowing it to be attached to a necklace or belt, is smooth and shiny. The last third, which in part repeats the grooved design from below, narrows and flares slightly into the unembellished neck and opening at the top. These elements complement each other in a visual rhythm of graceful shape combined with linear elements against flat planar surfaces in a finely balanced harmony.

A similar elongated ellipsoid-shaped snuff container, illustrated in the Annals of the South African Museum, also has a carved, grooved design across its body and a small semi-circular handle on its upper end. However, it differs in its carved designs and brass wirework around its neck and lower tip. This container is said to be typical of those used by the Manyika of Mashonaland, located in the northeast corner of Zimbabwe. An example with vertical ridges and grooves all the way up its body is said to be typical of the Mashona from the Salisbury (now Harare) region of Zimbabwe, as are a further three examples of this type on plate LXXI in the same publication.

In his Life of a South African Tribe, Swiss missionary Henri Junod illustrated an amphora-shaped snuff container with a small, looped handle carved from ebony. Its surface design however, while also being grooved and ridged, is in a lattice formation. He identified this container as belonging to a chief named Mavabaze who was, for a time, the head of the Khosa, a sub-group of xiTsonga speakers living in Mozambique, north of Lourenco Marques and south of the Olifants River.

The British Museum has a snuff container that resembles the ones discussed above but it has a wider, rounder end that narrows to the top with the neck flaring slightly to its opening. Donated by Dora Earthy who worked as a missionary and anthropologist in Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique) in the first half of the 20th century, she identified it as coming from Beira, at the mouth of the Pungwe River, 300 km east of Mutare in central Zimbabwe.

A geographical spread, rather than a ‘tribal’ identification, is possibly more suitable for the understanding of the origins of these elegant and finely-carved containers. They seem to originate in the northeastern regions of South Africa, with examples found as far as the eastern side of Zimbabwe and in Mozambique.

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