During the 1970’s and 1980’s, I had a contract to buy large quantities of Aquamarine, Garnets and some Emeralds from the midlands of Mozambique, the Alto Lighonia region.

I was visiting that place at least once every month and stay overnight.

I had excellent relations with the tribal chiefs as well as the 3-4 Portuguese mining engineers working the location.

One evening, the engineer presented me with a large ivory carvings and proudly he explained that, as far as he was aware, that was the only carving that he knew of, representing a white man face, a Portuguese face. He was sure that it was the likeness of Vasco da Gama, the first Portuguese that sailed around Africa at the beginning of the 16th century.

The tribal Chief agreed to the story and confirmed that never, to his best knowledge, has any of his tribesmen carved in ivory the face of a white man Hence, the Vasco da Gama carving must have been extremely old, long before the times that the Chief could remember.

I was shown a large collection of regular ivory carvings and eventually, the Chief presented me with a wonderful carving, showing in fine details the face of a local Bantu.

Here are the two carvings, being now offered for sale.