Mapiti - our collection

When we began Mapiti we started with the sculptures of Sam Kuve (Sampson Kuvenguhwa).  We wanted to bring Sam's works of art to life.  To do this we decided to build a small village where his pieces could come to life as they showed people in every day life. 

We also collected sculptures from other artists.  Many of these artists did not sign their work and we do not know who did the work.  All the pieces are in our opinion magnificient and are all in our collection named after Sam Kuve's Mapiti.

Most of the pieces are Shona Sculptores but as 20% of the poplulation is Ndebele we cannot say all of the pieces are only Shona Sculptures.  Shona makes up 80% of the poplulation which includes Karanga - Southern Shona, Zezuru - Central Shona, Korekore - Northern Shona,  Manyika - Eastern Shona.  What is certain is these are  Zimbabwean sculptures.  There are few other places in the world where there is such a proliferation of excellent artists as in Zimbabwe. 

Most of the pieces were sculpted in Harare which in 2022 had about 1.5 million people.  We were lucky enough to collect some wooden pieces saved from a camp fire in the area of Mutare as well as some other pieces from Victoria Falls.

You will find references to Great Zimbabwe which would definitly be worth while visiting should you visit this wonderful country as it seems Great Zimbabwe had a great influence on the sculptors of Zimbabwe.  Shona Mythology is also an important factor.  Earlier sculptors based a great deal of their work on mythology.  Sam Kuve also based his works partly on mythology such as the Rhino spirit man as well as life in general and how he lived and experienced it.

and the rendition of a medicine man or N'anga.

It is also important to understand where the stones come from, what kind of stones are used,  what inspires the artists and how they produce and polish their work.

In any venture as we have made with Mapiti it is important to understand what Shona sculpturing is and this has been well reaserched and written about by many authors.  We have included information from Mrs Celia Winter-Irving as she was probably the most knowledgeable of these authors. 

Finally once you have a piece it is worthwhile to know how to maintain it and we have included a small seciton on Maintenance.

Our carvings and paintings are principally not for sale.  We would like with our collection to support the artists in Zimbabwe foremost Sam Kuve and Barry Lungu from whom we hae collected the most pieces.  This does not mean that we consider the other artists to be inferior - far from it - their style may not be what we are looking for but most of the artists we have seen in Zimbabwe are excellent and it is worth collecting from any of them.  We do sell from time to time pieces to finance other purchases. 

It took us a long time to find an artist that could paint beautiful, lively paintings of scenes in the cities of Zimbabwe, as well as the local people as they are.  This artist is Barry Lungu who now complements our collection with his paintings. 

We hope you enjoy our small collection which we are constantly trying to develope. We hope you will become interested and will support these artists too so that their work can flourish.  We have added everywhere how you can contact the artists directly and we suggest direct communication as the best way to support these artists.