IDNO

LS.52055.GIJ

Description

A documentation photograph of a mask from the Nkporo Ifogu masquerade. The Ogu wooden face mask consists of a knife-like protrusion from the forehead, three cylindrical protrusions, slits for the eyes and painted in dark and light colours and spots around the eyes.

Place

W Africa; Nigeria; Eastern Nigeria; Northern Bende division

Cultural Affliation

Igbo [historically Ibo]; Nkporo

Named Person

Photographer

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

Collector / Expedition

Date

circa 1930 - 1939

Collection Name

Jones Collection

Source

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

Format

Lantern Slide Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

LS.52051.GIJ to LS.52057.GIJ were found with the piece of paper now numbered C247/4/ which was in wooden box formerly numbered 22. It has now been renumbered C247/ by the cataloguer.

The inscription on the box as well as a descriptive list of slides pasted on the inside lid of the box indicates that it originally contained lantern slides from the Fens and belonged to D.G. Reid.

However, the lantern slides are attributed to G.I. Jones because the handwriting on the papers found inside wooden box C246/ is similar to the handwriting on the papers found inside wooden box C247/.

Context: G. I. Jones describes the action of the Ifogu Nkporo masquerade , "The band came first, with sweeping palm-leaf skirts, cotton singlets and great raffia headdresses which made them look like enormous maned baboons. Their faces were hidden behind black and white raffia bags and they played on slit drums, large and small, on wooden and iron gongs, and on a small membrane drum... Then came out two main dancers, a pair of strange creatures with scarlet jerseys, black velvet hats with a white ribbon around them, and terrifying masks with human eyes, a sword coming out of the forehead and three conical projections beneath it, the whole suggesting vaguely the prow of a Melanesian war canoe. Each carried an egg in one hand and cross between a vanity bag and a rattle in the other. They danced in turn like fencers, advancing and retreating and ending abruptly poised on one foot, and with the egg thrust towards the person at whom they were dancing. When they were not dancing they rested on two chairs beside the band. Then the band was joined by some more drummers dressed in white and wearing the same masks as the red dancers. The bigger slit drums stopped and two clay pots and some lighter drums replaced them. The drumming grew more gentle and some of the band crooned a lilting song rather like a lullaby. (Jones, 1939, p.120).

In the Ada Ibo area there were specific styles of masks which were used in initiation masquerades. The style resembled the Lower Niger but the particular forms used were their own, and in the case of the abstract ones, unique. In reference to the abstract masks he notes , "that they were composed of a white, red, and black arrangement of an oval face with the features reduced to a vertical row of three projecting cylinders surmounted by a knifelike crest and suggestive of the prow of a Venetian gondola (1984, p.211)

Bibliographical Reference: Jones, G.I., 1984. The Art of Eastern Nigeria (Cambridge University Press); Jones.G.I., 1989, Ibo Art, (Shire) pp. 64-65; Jones, G.I. Ifogu Nkporo, Nigerian Field, Vol. VIII, pp. 119-121.

This catalogue record has been updated with the support of the Getty Grant Program Two. [Alicia Fentiman 18/3/2008]