In the 18th and 19th centuries, artists across southeastern Africa began to experiment with figuration. Bowls sprouted horn-shaped legs. Animals appeared on knives. And once-simple containers morphed into cows. Christian missionaries - who saw figurative art as superior to indegenous forms of abstraction - commissioned African artists to make many of these pieces. The knife featuring a European rider on a non-native horse was undoubtedly one such commission. The cow-shaped snuff container and four-legged bowl, however, were made for a southern African clientele. This shift in southern African taste can be attributed both to the growing fliency of local artists with figuration as well as the spread of photographic technology, which made figurative images more accessible to African artists.