IDNO

N.13037.GIJ

Description

Portrait of a young boy wearing a cowrie bead waist ornament, holding a carved wooden doll of a human figure. Standing in front of a brick and cement building with a shuttered window. The doll is carved of wood with a circular head with incised markings indicating eyes, nose, and mouth. The neck of the doll is elongated and the hands of the doll are resting on its abdomen. A man at right wearing white trousers, shirt, and shoes, and a belt. His head and half his body are not within the frame of the image.

Place

W Africa; Nigeria; Eastern Nigeria

Cultural Affliation

Igbo [historically Ibo]; Ezza

Named Person

Photographer

Jones, Gwilliam Iwan (known as G.I.)

Collector / Expedition

Date

1932 - 1939

Collection Name

Jones Collection

Source

Jones, Gwilliam Iwan (known as G.I.)

Format

Film Negative Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

This negative was kept in a film storage album labelled “Misc” by G. I. Jones, and numbered “C10/” by the cataloguer.

Publication: Same image published on John McCall’s G.I. Jones website with the following information: [Source: www.siu.edu/~anthro/mccall/jones/, AF ]
1. Index to Igbo music, shrines, architecture and other cultural artifacts
2. Other Igbo cultural items
3. A small boy with his doll Son of the court clerk of Ezza Court. The string of beads around his waist is unusual from males and is probably worn for ‘medicinal’ or ‘magical’ reasons (4th image).

Context: Wood carving was uncommon amongst the Ezza when Jones was doing fieldwork in Nigeria: “The open savannah plains between the Cross River and the Lower Benue which form the territories of the North-Eastern Ibo and the Tiv have produced little sculpture and none of great artistic merit. The North-Eastern Ibo had no masquerades and therefore no masks... I saw no figures except a few stylised dolls in the Ezza tribe.” However, Jones discusses that statuettes were not always associated with a religious significance; he writes about the use of dolls for children and, specifically, in the lower Niger area a large number of figures ranged from dolls and carvings to small human and animal figures.

Strings of bead around a male child’s waist is unusual and according to Jones a “a variety of objects were worn as charms,and usually hung around the neck like a necklace. But these were of ritual and medicinal rather than aesthetic value.” (Jones, 1984, p.31)

Bibliographical Reference: Jones, G.I., 1984. The Art of Eastern Nigeria (Cambridge University Press)

This catalogue record has been updated with the support of the Getty Grant Program Two. [Alicia Fentiman 16/10/2007]