IDNO

N.13055.GIJ

Description

View of a painted wooden model of a train inside a building. Electricity pillons run parallel with the track, and in the foreground a man figure wearing a helmet smoking a pipe is sitting on a chair at a table with two wine bottles on it. The interior walls are painted with ?multi-coloured patterns. The building has a corrugated iron roof.
In the right hand bottom corner of the image the shadow of the tripod, camera and photographer’s arm and body can be seen.

Physical Condition: Brittle, yellowing negative.

Place

W Africa; Nigeria; Eastern Nigeria; Nike

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

This image is one of a series of images of the “train juju” at Nike town.

In the train juju series of pictures.

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. Train juju Interior of the house of the train juju (alusi) showing the engine. Made by the people of Nike in honour of the railway that runs through their land (Enugu) (10th image).

The “idea of building houses decorated with carvings ostensibly for the honour of the village or town deity, but primarily for the prestige of the place, occurred sporadically during the 1930s in a number of ... Ibo communities. For example, the people Nike (Northern Ibo) whose land was traversed by the Nigerian Eastern railway, made a house with a wooden model of a railway train complete with passengers and other accessories for the honour of their tutelary deity.” (Jones, 1984,110)

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 9/4/2008]