Pair, Carved African Wooden Figures Gifted to Shirley Temple by Osa and Martin Johnson

Live Auction

15" (38 cm.) Each is one-piece carved exotic wood with highly-characterized features, including a woman with carved costume and having a carved baby cradle and baby on back, and man with stretched earlobes, and having original cloth skirt and painted leather shield. Generally excellent. The figures were given to young Shirley in the mid-1930s by the adventurous African explorers, Osa and Martin Johnson, whose exploits were the subjects of a number of early films. Martin died in an airplane crash in Southern California in 1937 and Osa was severly injured, shown here in a photograph with Shirley Temple who is wearing a costume from "Wee Willie Winkie". Osa Martin's 1940 autobiography, I Married Adventure, was the best-selling non-fiction book of that year.