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Craft Media - Vessel (itinate)

Date: early 20th century

Dimensions: Overall: 16 x 5 x 5 in. (40.64 x 12.7 x 12.7 cm)

Medium: Terracotta

Credit Line: Dallas Museum of Art, gift of The Cecil and Ida Green Foundation

Geographic location:Africa, Nigeria

Culture: Cham or Mwona peoples

Additional Information: Embellished vessels (itinate) were traditionally used in divination and healing rituals among diverse peoples in the Lower Gongola River Valley in northeast Nigeria. The stylistically similar healing vessels of the Cham and Mwona peoples feature a bulbous base surmounted by either a figure with an open mouth or a nonrepresentational form. The surface of the upper portion usually has a rough, often jagged, texture. The highly stylized female figure on this vessel has an elaborate hairstyle or headdress tapering into a hornlike form, an apelike brow, eyes, and an elongated snoutlike mouth with notched lips. Its "collar" and the band encircling the place where the upper and lower portions meet are similarly notched. When J. N. Hare, an official of the British Colonial Administrative Service in Nigeria, formed a collection of these vessels in the late 1950s, the practice of making them was dying out and only the elderly knew how to use them. Individuals concerned about infertility or giving birth to a healthy baby, tending to a sick animal, or threatened by forces beyond their control conferred with the village diviner, a man of great authority. The diviner consulted either a male or female terracotta figure, according to the patient's gender, for advice. Upon receiving an answer, the diviner sent the patient to a male potter to commission a specific vessel. The potter had to be highly skilled and familiar with the different kinds of vessels in order to ensure the prescription would work. Before a vessel could be used, the diviner activated it with incantations, pouring a libation, and in some cases, filling the vessel with water from a particular pool that...