Yoruba, Nigeria, 19th century or earlier
Cast copper alloy
Height 8 1/4 inches (21 cm) each
Provenance: London trade; private collection, Paris
The pair stand frontally on short splayed legs with the feet worked as flat pads, each wearing a tall conical cap ribbed in horizontal courses and rising to a small knob, the male cap plain and the female cap carved with a lattice of fine incised lines. The male holds a long stemmed pipe upright against his chest with both hands and wears a twisted cord across one shoulder, while the female raises both hands to her breasts and wears a beaded collar and a corded belt at the waist. Both faces are cut with wide almond eyes set beneath heavy brows, vertical marks running down the cheeks, and a narrow mouth, and both are hollow cast with a green and brown surface that has settled unevenly across the shoulders and into the incised detail.
Onile figures represent the owner of the earth and belonged to the Ogboni society, the Yoruba association that held judicial authority and mediated between the community and the earth on which oaths were sworn. They were normally made and kept as a male and female pair, and the pairing is the point rather than a coincidence of survival, since the two together expressed the balance the society was there to hold. Cast figures separated from their partner are far more common than intact pairs, and both examples here retain the caps and the hands, which are the elements most often damaged.
We ship free anywhere in the world, fully insured, packed by hand.
Yoruba, Nigeria, 19th century or earlier
Cast copper alloy
Height 8 1/4 inches (21 cm) each
Provenance: London trade; private collection, Paris
The pair stand frontally on short splayed legs with the feet worked as flat pads, each wearing a tall conical cap ribbed in horizontal courses and rising to a small knob, the male cap plain and the female cap carved with a lattice of fine incised lines. The male holds a long stemmed pipe upright against his chest with both hands and wears a twisted cord across one shoulder, while the female raises both hands to her breasts and wears a beaded collar and a corded belt at the waist. Both faces are cut with wide almond eyes set beneath heavy brows, vertical marks running down the cheeks, and a narrow mouth, and both are hollow cast with a green and brown surface that has settled unevenly across the shoulders and into the incised detail.
Onile figures represent the owner of the earth and belonged to the Ogboni society, the Yoruba association that held judicial authority and mediated between the community and the earth on which oaths were sworn. They were normally made and kept as a male and female pair, and the pairing is the point rather than a coincidence of survival, since the two together expressed the balance the society was there to hold. Cast figures separated from their partner are far more common than intact pairs, and both examples here retain the caps and the hands, which are the elements most often damaged.
We ship free anywhere in the world, fully insured, packed by hand.
