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Ceramic vessels created by artists of the Upper Benue region of central Nigeria served ritual purposes, including healing the sick, safeguarding hunters and warriors, and activating the presence of various ancestral and protective spirits.

There are striking convergences in the styles and functions of ceramic sculpture found among neighboring peoples, revealing the extent of their historical communication and exchange. The elegant twisted beard on this particular vessel is unusual and may be an innovation of the artist, Musa Rabkabaw, who created it.

(See also: Treasures from Nigeria Reveal Rich Artistic Heritage.)

Musa Rabkabaw (active 1950s–1970s)
Spirit vessel (Ngwarkandangra)
‘Bəna peoples, Riji village
Circa 1955
Ceramic
Fowler Museum at UCLA; gift of Arnold Rubin
Collected by Arnold Rubin, 1970
X86.4693
Photograph by Don Cole, 2010. © Fowler Museum at UCLA

The predominance of sculptural ceramic vessels at the center of Upper Benue religious practices represents a marked departure from the wood figures and masks typical of the other two Benue Valley subregions. The highly decorated and anthropomorphized vessels, made primarily by women artists, instead exploit the expressive capacities of clay. Such vessels served ritual functions.

This one was used by pregnant women to protect the fetus or to cure illnesses associated with pregnancy. It features a “blind spout” in the form of an open-mouthed head emerging at a diagonal from the vessel’s side.

Vessel to protect a pregnant woman and her fetus (jina bitibiyu)
Cham-Mwana peoples
Late 20th century
Ceramic
Musée du quai Branly, Paris, 73.1998.12.6
L2010.40.14
© Musée du quai Branly/Photo: Thierry Ollivier/Michel Urtado/Scala, Florence

The vertical masks associated with the Wurkun and Bikwin peoples living north of the Benue River in the Muri Mountains are the most idiosyncratic. These Middle Benue masks were hidden in caves to preserve their secrecy.

The sole eyewitness account of a Wurkun vertical mask like this one comes from an American missionary, C.W. Guinter, who saw as many as 16 masqueraders wearing wood masks in one memorial rite in 1925. This example could have been worn with the performer’s face turned sideways. It seems to have been carved to “read” differently from the front and the side views, which may have had something to do with how it “walked” and was seen in performance.

Vertical mask
Wurkun/Bikwin peoples
Before early 20th century
Wood, palm oil, pigments
Robert T. Wall family
L2010.83.2
Photograph by Don Tuttle, 2010

The Chamba artist Soompa (active from the 1920s to 1940s) carved this intriguing sculpture, which reveals Soompa’s volumetric approach to the human form.

Soompa’s double figures — the torsos of a male and female sharing a single hip plinth and a pair of legs, or alternately emerging from a single forked pole — are among the most original sculptural inventions of the Middle Benue region. Soompa’s female figures have angular, flat-edged crests atop their heads, while the crests on his males are rounded with serrated edges. The double-figure sculptures, said to represent a married couple, were found among the apparatus of several different ritual associations.

Sompa (active 1920s-1940s)
Chamba peoples
1920s–1940s
Male/female double figure
Wood
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, 2005.77; gift of Robert and Nancy Nooter

Figurative sculptures associated with the Mumuye peoples of the Middle Benue region were used in rituals to protect crops from drought and disease as well as to promote successful harvests. Sometimes the figures also were used as oracles or to reinforce the status of important elders.

These sculptures tend to be bold, elongated and angular. Female figures are indicated by large perforated earlobes and male figures by helmets with high crests and/or flaps. When Mumuye sculptures entered the art market in the late 1960s, their distinctive abstract form caused a sensation.

Figures
Mumuye peoples
19th-20th centuries
Wood
Photograph by Jane Chun (State Dept.)