African Dream Machines is a tour de force … The breadth of focus in this book is astounding.
—Robyn Sassen, Art South Africa

African Dream Machines takes African headrests out of the category of functional objects and into the more rarefied category of ‘art’ objects. Styles in African headrests are usually defined in terms of western art and archaeological discourses, but this book interrogates these definitions of style and demonstrates the shortcomings of defining a single formal style model as exclusive to a single ethnic group. Anitra Nettleton’s drawings of each and every headrest encountered are a major part of the project.

Anitra Nettleton is Professor in the Wits School of Arts, Univers ity of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. She is the 2006 winner of the Wits University Research Committee Publicatio n Award.