The Flip-flop Toys of Saarenald T. S. Yaawaisan in the Bryn Mawr Art and Artifact Collections

| african arts SPRING 2023 VOL. 56, NO. 1 A conservators’ first step is to examine the materials, construction, and cultural context of artifacts. This ensures a full understanding of the objects, allowing us to consider any ethical implications of our work prior to any potential treatment. This is also one of the first ideas that we teach to aspiring conservators. To facilitate this, in early 2020, Bryn Mawr College loaned four toys constructed primarily from colorful flip-flop sandals to the University of Delaware for use in an undergraduate-level course in art conservation. The course centered on learning how to document artifacts, studying materials used in the manufacture of art, and recognizing condition issues. The flip-flop toys provided rich material for investigating each of these areas and challenged students to capture these complicated structures in a report. Furthermore, the students were tasked with putting these artifacts into context. Although they were resourceful in finding references about the artist, it was clear that there was not much available to research. Through the Bryn Mawr Collection online catalogue, they could see that Saarenald T.S. Yaawaisan made the toys, that they were accessioned in 2016, and that Jane Martin had donated them to Bryn Mawr. But who was Yaawaisan? How is he connected to Bryn Mawr? This article will address these questions in more detail and will also put Yaawaisan’s work into broader context. It will consider the materials and methods of manufacture as described from a conservation-based point of view and supported by condition observations. It will also compare them to selected other flip-flop art works by African artists and contextualize them in the use of discarded materials for artistic purposes.