Kneeling female bowl bearer ·  Sierra Leone, Sherbro/Mende · ID: 3039538

Description

wood, matt shiny blackish brown patina, carrying a child on the back, beautiful modelled body with round forms, raised trefoil neck pendant, the bowl carved as a standing fowl (cover missing), slightly dam., small traces of insect caused damage (bowl corpus), swivel base;
the motif of the kneeling female combined with a bowl in shape of a fowl is a characteristic theme of court art in Yorubaland. Gift-bowls such as this adorned the reception halls of many kings, especially in the Ekiti and Igbomina areas. Some were used for keeping kola nuts and other presents given to important visitors by the king. The carving itself however, the ringed neck and the elaborate grooved coiffure, refer to a Sherbro/Mende artist. This can be explained by the fact, that it is the greatest concentration of Yoruba outside the Yoruba homelands in Nigeria, Benin, Togo and Ghana is undoubtedly in coastal Sierra Leone about Freetown and Sherbro, where there is a flourishing colony of three hundred years or so standing, mainly merchants dealing in such crops as kola nuts of which vast quantities are exported from Nigeria to the rest of western Africa.

Littérature comparée

Lawal, Babatunde, Yoruba, Mailand 2012, p. 132, ill. 18.