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Description: | Old label: "IFA Bowl". Shallow dish held aloft by seated female figure. Applied blue, white, yellow and red pigments. Carved from a single piece of wood. Has historic labels, one with "139" and other with "78-314//143[?]"
This bowl would have been called Agere Ifa – and were used as offering bowls for hospitality, or as containers to hold the sixteen sacred palm nuts (otherwise known as Ikin) for divination (i.e. a system by which to foretell the future). They would generally be accompanied by other tools for use in Ifa divination. This would have included: the divining tray (Opon Ifa); divining powder (yerosun) and a conical bell made of ivory, horn or wood (Irofa). In the Ifa divination process, Orunmila (the Yoruba deity of wisdom) is used for divine guidance by the diviner – who is seeking the solution to a problem. After the diviner strikes the conical bell and throws the kola nuts on the tray, the ‘dialogue’ between the human and supernatural worlds would have begun.
Accession number: NCM 1992-602/163 | Subjects: | food and drink? AFRICAN NIGERIAN | Temporal: | 1800-1878? | Source: | Nottingham City Museums and Galleries | Identifier: | http://media.culturegrid.org.uk/mediaLib... | Go to resource |
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