IDNO

N.13044.GIJ

Description

Two calabash containers with basketry covering seated on a raffia circular holder. Each container is circular in shape and has a protrusion which possibly acts as a handle. There is also a leather or twine rope threaded through the centre of the calabash through two holes at either end. Behind the calabashes are vertical shapes - possibly a shrine? To the right hand corner of the photograph are ?feathers or ?fur.

Physical Condition: Slight yellowing of negative.

Place

W Africa; Nigeria; Northern Ibo

Cultural Affliation

Igbo [historically Ibo]

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

The calabashes have been photographed beside the same mud ?shrine as the okwa nze (chalk bowl) in N.13039.GIJ.

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. Calabash containers with basketry coverings (2nd image).

Context: Jones discusses the various types of basketry and calabash carving in Eastern Nigeria. The hard shell covering of calabash gourds was used universally throughout Africa to provide cheap and light containers. In Eastern Nigeria, the three main forms were long and narrow, short and squat and global.

Baskets were made from all sorts of materials: cane, strips of raffia ‘bamboo’, raffia threads, the outer fibre of raffia palm stems, oil-palm leaves, grasses and reeds, and these materials were used singly or sometimes in combination. Jones differentiates between the different basketry preferences throughout Eastern Nigeria and the notes that amongst the northern Ibo women used the circular baskets. (Jones,1984, pp.21-22).

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]