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Igbo Ikenga Shrine Figure with Colonial Style Pith Helmet, Nigeria #225 PROVENANCE
$ 9,800.00 $ 4,900.00
- Igbo Ikenga Shrine Figure with Pith Helmet, Nigeria #225 PROVENANCE
- The Igbo honor the Forces of Nature in the form of Spirits, as well as...a figurative statue, and ritually venerated in his own shrine where he is given offerings."
- Living in the middle of the African forest, the Igbo always believed that the Spirits of the Forest, the Edjo, influenced their daily lives. Warrior sculptures representing the Edjo are a tribute to the Spirits of the Forest, as well as to the Ancestors. They can be considered either evil or beneficial, and each Community has the duty of controlling them. The Edjo are subject to an almost daily Cult, and each Edjo has a dedicated Priest or Priestess.
- Ikenga is a personal God of human endeavor, achievement, success, and victory.
- Ikenga is grounded in. the belief that the power for a man to accomplish things is in his right hand.
- Ikenga also governs over industry, farming, and blacksmithing, and is celebrated every year with an annual Ikenga Festival.
- Ikenga are mostly maintained, kept or owned by men and occasionally by women of high reputation and integrity in the Society. It comprises someone's Chi (personal God), his Ndichie (Ancestors), aka Ikenga (right hand), ike (power) as well as Spiritual activation through prayer and sacrifice.
- Estimated age: Between 1930 and 1950.
- Lit.: Erwin Melchardt: Urhobo, Nigeria: A sculpture of the 'mythical warrior Ejo', who is venerated in his own shrines by the Urhobo, in: Doro theum, Lot No. 55; Perkins Foss, "Urhobo Statuary for Spirits and Ancestors", African Arts, July 1976, Vol. IX, No. 4, p. 18; Jean-Baptiste Bacquart: The Tribal Arts of Afric’, p. 93, fig. 8.
- Measurements: Size: 34'' x 10'' x 7'' (86 x 25 x 18 cm).
- Depicted wearing a pith helmet, a carved "string" of beads, and holding a traditional Title Staff (repaired). Carved wood with kaolin, yellow ocher, cloth attachments and signs of ritual feeding.
- PROVENANCE
- Origin is Igbo, Nigeria