Ibo Art (Shire Ethnography)

The sculpture of West and Central Africa has long won the admiration of the modern art world. It is a style of carving in wood confined very largely to masks and figures which in the minds of their creators represented the denizens of the spirit world around them. Different regions had their own particular beliefs and rituals associated with them which found expression in very different art styles. Nowhere was this more apparent than in Eastern Nigeria, where the culture of the western African savannah met and mingled with that of the central African rain forest. This, one of the most densely populated parts of Africa, is the home of ten million Ibo, who, together with the neighbouring Ibibio, supplied the New World with many thousands of slaves, and nineteenth-century Europe with most of its vegetable oil. This book examines the sculpture of the different Ibo tribes, placing it in its cultural and social setting and disentangling and distinguishing its local variations. About the authorAfter graduating from Oxford G. I. Jones entered the colonial administrative service and served as District Officer in southern Nigeria until 1946, when he transferred to Cambridge University to become a lecturer in social anthropology and obtained his PhD. While serving in Nigeria he became interested in African art and co-operated with K. C. Murray in a survey of the arts and crafts of the eastern region; they photographed the wealth of masks and figures that still survived and rescued those that now form the basis of the magnificent collection in the National Museum of Nigeria.