The Vai Syllabary of Africa

1997. Unique, signed by the artist.. Softcover. Near fine. Octavo. (16)ff. Calligraphic work on pastepaper. Ayers here presents the Vai syllabary, a writing system developed in the 1830s for the Vai language of Liberia by Momolu Duwale Bukele. It remains well in use, especially after the University of Liberia's expansion of the forms and diacritical markings in the 1960s. Scholarship has increasingly taken note of the syllabary's similarity to the Cherokee syllabary, a hypothesis supported by early 19th-century American missionaries' adoption of the Cherokee syllabary for their own purposes in Liberia. A further, more insistent if tenuous connection locates the Cherokee Austin Curtis, who emigrated to Liberia and married into a Vai family. Ayers here adopts an aesthetic more evocative of the Vai syllabary's mythos: Bukele claimed the script was revealed to him in a dream, probably to cement his role in the secret Poro Society (not unlike various indigenous American figures who claimed the same). Scant edge rubs, else near fine in self wrappers.