UNIT 5 TOURISM DEVELOPMENT: PRODUCTS AND
World collectors soon began to pay rich tribute to the technical mastery of the Benin metal castings and the ivory carvings.
Benin art was produced mostly for the court of the oba and his chiefs, and was closely connected with the worship of ancestors.
In 1943 the government of Nigeria started an Antiquities Service and began trying to buy back Benin works from abroad. Most of the pieces, however, were already in the permanent collections in museums in Europe and America. There were comparatively few old Benin works in Nigeria. Most were in the
A GATEKEEPER HERALDING the arrival of a king
place of the Oba of Benin and a few with Benin chiefs.
At one stage it was thought that the Portuguese introduced brass casting to Benin at the end of the fifteenth century, but this was disproved when
experts agreed that Benin art had come from Ife. This view was strengthened by the fact that there are nineteen bronze heads and part of a bronze figure at Ife which are almost certainly older than the Benin bronzes.
A German, Leo Frobenius, first brought the existence of the Ife bronze work to the knowledge of the world. This was in 1910, when he managed to take away – at least for a time – a bron ze head called Olokun.
After the introduction of the art of casting to Benin it spread from there to other areas. At Igbo, near Awka, Eastern Nigeria, a number, of richly-ornamented bowls and articles for ceremonial use were found in 1939 and were given by J. O. Field to the national collection. It is thought that these works were either made at Benin or by crafts men from Benin and that they were part of the dress and utensils of a former chief priest.
At Owo, Western Nigeria, there is a crude but vigorous sub-style of Benin art. Swords with bronze and copper hilts and bronze ornaments for ceremonial costumes are to be found as well as good ivory wristles.
Another sub-style developed at Ijebu-Ode. It is a figure of a kneeling woman making a sign of the Ogboni Society. In its expression it is much akin to the wood carvings of West Africa.
Some distance to the north of Ife, at Esie, in Ilorin Province, there are fragments of some 700 carvings that are now kept in a shelter built by the government. There are also important stone carvings in the Ogoja Province of Eastern Nigeria. These are of unknown age.
The sculptural arts of Nigeria have been principally in three materials:
bronze or other mixtures of tin, zinc or lead with copper; wood; and clay, which is called terracotta when it has been baked in a fire.
Terracotta work began in Nigeria some 2,000 years ago, when people were starting to use iron instead of stone tools. Nigerians were able, in those early years, to make remarkable terracotrta heads and figures opf people and animals, and these have been found distributed over an area from near Kafanchan to Nasarawa and Kastina Ala. There is a rare delicacy in the best of this work and shows that the makers, even in those dark and early years, must have been far from a state of savagery.
The ancient Nigerian culture which has been brought to light by tin mining and the efforts of the government archaelogist has been named Nok, after the place in Zaria Province where many kinds of this class of work have been made. Though the care and generosity of miners the museum at Jos has been enriched by several magnificent examples.
The Technique of the Ife bronzes is widely admired
The next important series of terracottas are from Ife. The most famous of them all is the large and beautiful head called Lajuwa, which has been in the Afin at Ife for a long time.
Although the technique of the Ife bronzes is widely admired, it is the Nigerian traditional wood carving that has most deeply stirred the artists abroad. These carvings are praised for their vigour and the imaginativeness of their shapes.
Because of its extraordinary purity, its interest in an inner world of spirits as opposed to natural, physical forms, Nigerian – and other West African art – has been called the most spiritual kn own to man.
Some of the oldest wood carvings that survive in Nigeria were made in the Oron Clan of Eastern Nigeria. Along the Cross River, especially in Ikom, the Ekoi people developed a unique art – the covering of carved heads with skin. The origin of this art is unknown for nowhere else in west Africa is it done. The nearest approach to it is the making of skin vessels, which is one of the crafts of the people of Kastina in North Nigeria.
The Yoruba were apparently the most prolific of Nigerian woodcarvers.
Their principal gods or orisa have been “reproduced ” in special types of carvings which their worshippers use at religious festivals. In the old days the doors and verandah posts of important houses were carved.
Humour, a good quality of craftsmanship, and adherence to traditional forms, are characteristics of Yoruba carving. Their ancient ivories are among the most beautiful works of Nigerian art.
The Ibo have many different kinds of masks and head-dresses and have been quick to enrich their own work with ideas from neighbouring people. Their carvings are among the most inspired. The best of their work is to be seen in the slender carvings of people which were carried on the head in the Ngwa-Bende area, and in the white-faced masks which represent maidens.
Until very recently girls still painted beautiful designs (uri and nkasi) on their bodies, showing an artistic skill that no Western-oriented scooling has been able to recall.
Seen as a whole, wood carvings of Nigeria, in spite of their many individual differences, are evidence of the fundamental cultural unity of the country. The masks and head-dresses contributed sculptural form to the universal activity of dancing, of which the other ingredients were music, colour and movement.
SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE
What is the name of the Foreign Director of Nigerian Antiquities?