Antique African Print - The Zulu Belle - 1890 - South Africa - Historic Natural African Hair - Tribal Scarification

Treasures from THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN COLLECTION at The Willing Mind. By exclusive arrangement with The Grand Review.

Print size 24 x 18, and consciously formatted to work with a standard size store bought frame, or custom framed as you see fit.

Oh, Zulu Belle... what are you thinking?

Your gaze is off into the infinite distance, or it rests on something of interest, something of importance, something beloved, just over on the next hill. You look into the future. Perhaps into the past. I can bring many things of my own to bear here, as can anyone, but her countenance reveals everything and nothing all at once. Not unlike the ambivalent smile of the Mona Lisa.

This woodcut is from a book exploring the peoples of the world, late 19th century. We could just as easily be looking at someone from Lapland or a member of the Zuni tribe in New Mexico. Instead, we have an example of the fine work of an amazing yet unsung working artist who completely and utterly preserved this moment and our Zullu Belle's place in it for eternity.

This has long been a favorite of mine, and there is nothing about it I don't love. Her beauty, her remarkably elaborate yet still somehow reserved traditional African hairstyle, the classic diamond or double triangle tribal scarification mid back, still the most common beauty marking in Southern Africa. Her confident, healthy femininity and her solid, comfortable repose.

I know her. I know her face just as I know her gaze.

This is an example of stumbling across an antique page in a book and just letting out a gasp of joy. We brought it home and put it on the wall of the studio just so for quite some time before we got around to putting it through our process. I celebrate the magic and the skill of this long dead and totally unknown artist and our model, here dubbed The Zulu Belle.

• Handmade item
• Materials: Art stock enhanced matte paper, archival ink
• Made to order
• Only ships within United States.

SHIPPING

All prints are shipped in a sturdy mailing tube for $8, which covers postage, tube and S & H.

BUYING MORE THAN ONE PRINT? Add a second print or any number thereafter of this or any other prints in our catalog and shipping is still just $8, total!!!

International shipping is available and reasonable. Please contact us for details.

A NOTE ON OUR PROCESS, OUR CHOICES AND THE QUALITY OF THE GRAPHIC CRAFTSMANSHIP THAT GOES INTO OUR PRINTS.

Every print we deem exciting enough to present to the public via our Etsy store or available here at our studio has gone through a number of steps. The first of those is always discovering and falling in love with an obscure image, always an original that we can hold in our hands. That image is speaking to us, sometime screaming “Don’t leave me here. See what I am, what I was, what I can be, what I SHOULD be!”

There is a real sense of excitement involved, and a great many smiles and knowing grins when we make that deal and bring that ancient print, that battered photo, that scrap of ephemera that contains some scrap of genius from an unknown commercial artist home with us, knowing already how we mean to approach its restoration.

There is the heady promise of a further hunt just as real as what drags a weekend fisherman out of bed at 3AM to work a favorite brook as we start our research, looking for that great backstory, and both ready and willing to tumble down as many rabbit holes as are revealed to us to get that story.

Then there is a meticulous digital restoration that is as often as much fun as riding a vintage Moto Guzzi on a winding coastal road. I don’t care if that sounds crazy, it really is like jumping in the saddle! So many choices, so many chances to take to subtly or spectacularly give new life to otherwise permanently obscure images.

This dedication and the ongoing rush of joy in the accomplishment of it, and the opportunity to share the results in our studio and here on Etsy, is the fire of passion that keeps these engines roaring. We make every effort to ensure our customers are not just satisfied but thrilled, and we happily stand 100% behind our work.