IDNO

P.73872.GIJ

Description

The interior of the Omuku Obu meeting house showing a close up view of two life sized figures. The figure on the right is a woman and she is painted in colours and wearing a cloth wrapper and “ivory” anklets; the figure on the left is a man and is wearing a hat and a cloth wrapper, and painted in bold colours. The walls are painted with white lines, circles, dots and swirls. Between the two figures is a wooden object hanging on the wall.

Place

W Africa; Nigeria; Southeast Nigeria; Asaga

Cultural Affliation

Igbo [historically Ibo]; Ohaffia

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

Print Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

P.73815.GIJ to P.73888.GIJ were kept in box 9, now numbered C337/.
P.73866.GIJ to P.73888.GIJ were found wrapped in paper, now numbered C337/5/.

Context: Jones discusses the history and concept of the meeting houses. He writes, “Before the colonial period few communities in the Eastern Region had any public buildings. They had their meeting-places, which in the forest zone were clearings under a few large forest trees, and in some of the savannah areas had trees specially planted for this purpose. In some groups the head of a compound, in addition to his own house, had a shed or low-walled building called Obu amongst the Ibo, where he could entertain his friends and where the men and women of the compound could sit and engage in domestic task our of the sun and the rain. When it was necessary for the elders of the village or for the members of a club or other association to meet together they did so at the house or the Obu of one of their senior members. On the Cross River, however, each village had its meeting-house which was also the clubhouse or lodge of its secret society. Where the village was a large one, as amongst the Cross River Ibo, each ward had its own Obu. The plan of the building was the same throughout the area; it was a rectangular hall with a high gabled roof whose ridge pole was supported on three posts set in pedestals of polished clay. The front one, which faced the entrance, was decorated and in many cases carved, the last was hidden in the high walls at the back of the hall which enclosed one or two small rooms housing the secret paraphernalia of the society. The rest of the hall was surrounded by a low wall except for the entrance, which was left open; inside these walls and backing on to them were couches and platforms of polished clay: in the more elaborate examples these were carved with simple patterns and the high wall at the back was decorated with small stones and other objects or had patterns or frescoes painted on it. Amongst the Abam, Abiriba and Ohaffia Ibo the front and the central posts were either carved or had separate wooden statues attached to them, and other statues were erected independently on each side of the entrance. Meeting-houses which belonged to Ekpe (Egbo) and similar secret societies could only be used by initiates of the society, but as all the men of the village were normally members of the society it became the men’s clubhouse. The Abam and Ohaffia meeting-house belonged to the patriclan or ward and all members, including women married into the clan, could use it. It was also used by a secret society and one of the rooms at the back was usually preserved for its paraphernalia. Among the neighbouring Ada Ibo meeting-houses were less elaborately constructed; most of them had a roof but no walls. Women were barred from them as they were used for men’s initiation rituals and the carvings used in their masquerades were kept in the roof (Jones, 1984, p.102).

Context: In relation to the Ohaffia Obu-Nkwa meeting houses, Jones provides a detailed description of the Obu house in Asaga. He writes, “In the case of the Abam-Ohaffia group some of them -referred to as as Obu-Nkwa- were decorated with wooden figures which were said to be lesser spirits associated with the house. They were figures of men and women of varying ages and occupations, warriors with guns, head-hunters with cutlass and trophy head, old men drinking wine through a straw, Egbo runners, old women with ivory anklets younger women carrying pots or nursing babies and other stock characters taken fro everyday life. In the Ohaffia tribe only Ebem and Asaga towns had the right to make them and their fashion spread as far as Item, Alayi, and Ozu/Item tribes. But by the 1930s the fashion died out and only survived in a few meeting-houses in Abiriba and Ohaffia. The finest of these, with the most striking figures, was that of Asaga, which had become the spirit house and shrine of Omuku, the founder of Asaga who had bruth them three from Eziama Ohaffia. This founding ancestor had become a tutelary deity with power to make barren women fertile and poor men rich. The house was called Obu Omuku and it contained the founder’s war drum (ikoro), the ancestral shrine of Omuku’s lineage and twenty-one figures, most of them almost life-size and two considerably larger. The house had high lath-and-plaster walls with a verandah in the front and along one of the side walls. It had a raised pedestal at the base of the central wooden post supporting the roof and benches of solid mud against the walls. The figures were arranged on them and on the verandah outside. Apart from one called ‘guardian of the ikoro’, they were alternately male and female and were said to be married to each other. They were painted in water-colour pigments, white for the most of the body with decorations in red, black and yellow and the tarry smear on their lips and on the knees of the statue whose head was high up in the roof was the blood from sacrifices made to Omuku. The walls behind were coloured elephant grey with vertical bands of white dividing it into panels which were decorated with designs of spheres, curves, and ovoids in yellow and red (Jones, 1984, p.109).

Publication: 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 6/2/2008]