IDNO

T.170124.GIJ

Description

View of a Ngwomo ‘ghost house’, and a “modern monument”. The ‘ghost house’ has a raffia mat roof on a three-sided wall in a u-shape which is painted with frescos. The “modern monument” or grave is made of cement a has text painted on it which includes the date: 5.3.1932. [Description from record N.13236.GIJ, PB 29/09/2023]

Place

W Africa; Nigeria; South Eastern Nigeria

Cultural Affliation

Ibibio [historically Anang]

Named Person

Photographer

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

Collector / Expedition

Date

circa 1930 - 1939; 1984

Collection Name

Jones Collection

Source

Format

Colour Transparency

Primary Documentation

Other Information

T.169937.GIJ - T.170148.GIJ were located together in a Agfa transparency box, now numbered C756/.

Publication: Image published in Jones, G.I. 1984. The Art of Eastern Nigeria. (Cambridge: CUP), fig. 30 p. 105, and captioned as "Modern monument and a Ngwomo." [PB 29/09/2023]

Bibliographical Reference: "Many of the Anang (Western Ibibio) tribes used to erect monuments for their most important dead in the form of conventionalised houses. The architecture was of little significance as the building was reduced to a single wall surmounted by a raffia mat roof. If the deceased was a man the building was tall and narrow and the 'wall' was a length of imported cotton cloth stretched across a 'bamboo' frame: if a woman, the wall was of the local lath-and-plaster type rubbed with clay and was low and wide and supported by buttressed. This clay wall was painted with water-colour frescoes of figures of men, women, animals and objects from everyday life. These were depicted in profile against a white background." (Jones, G.I. 1984: 104) [PB 29/09/2023]