Additional information
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| Primary Materials |
Open-Mouthed Head from Spirit Vessel
Mafa people create pots for a variety of utilitarian and ritual purposes. This fragment was brought back from Cameroon in the late 1960s by the late Jerry Vogel. It represents the mouth and neck of a once-bulbous pot representing the Mafa god Zhigalla, guardian of the compound. Such pots are created and employed as protection for homesteads and as guardians and channels of procreative power for blacksmith forges and smelting furnaces. Guardian pots of this type are formed by a combination of methods beginning with a tamper and anvil technique, topped off with coiling, and then additions — such as a single left arm (the hand of god and man), horn-like projections and genitalia — are hand-formed. Additional details are created with tools of impression, such as roulettes, and with additions in the form of beads of wet clay.
6″
