shrine
- Museum number
- Af1950,45.334
- Description
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Carved wooden funerary screen, showing a house-head in the masquerade outfit that he performed in life. This one is Bekinarusibi ('white man's ship on head') and celebrates the wealth that came from trade.
- Production date
- 19thC(early)
- Dimensions
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Height: 114 centimetres
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Width: 73 centimetres
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Depth: 42 centimetres
- Curator's comments
-
Register gives part-letters (a-i); no drawing or description; "ship" added to Africa Floor copy.
See Ethdoc 267 which consists of six photographs of Kalabari screens taken by Talbot. These bear considerable similarities to five screens now in the BM (Af 1950,45.331, 332, 333, 333a, 334) and one in the Pitt Rivers Museum (1916,45.183), although there are also marked differences. Nigel Barley in 'Foreheads of the Dead' (1988) comments (p.48) that the photographs 'appear to have been taken on the lawn of the British Consulate in Degema, where the screens were moved after being given to [Talbot]. The photographs raise the suspicion that detachable pieces have been redistributed randomly'.
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The screen shows a house-head in the masquerade outfit that he performed in life. This one is Bekinarusibi ('white man's ship on head') and celebrates the wealth that came from trade.
The screens were kept in the meeting house, the headquarters of the trading house. Offerings were made to them at least once every eight days.
N. Barley, Foreheads of the dead (Washington, Smithsonian Institution, 1988)
T. Phillips (ed.), Africa, the art of a continent (London, Royal Academy, 1995)
- Location
- On display (G25/dc13)
- Acquisition date
- 1950
- Acquisition notes
- One of a group of such shrines acquired by P Amaury Talbot in 1916: see comments on Af1950,45.331.
- Department
- Africa, Oceania and the Americas
- Registration number
- Af1950,45.334
- Additional IDs
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CDMS number: Af1950A45.334a-i (old CDMS no.)
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Other BM number: Af1973,Q.1100 (previously registered as)
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Previous owner/ex-collection number: 132 (P. A. Talbot Collection number)