Hen (1900s): Art, History and Details

Hen (1900s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Materials used for ritual objects correspond with the status of their owner, or the person it was dedicated to. Men have cast brass roosters, while women have carved wooden hens like this. This egg-shaped bird is covered with patterns formed by parallel lines indicating the bird’s feathers, from fluffy tufts to sleek plumage. Realistically carved, it replicates an animal that would be sacrificed on a woman’s shrine. On an ancestral altar, it sat alongside other objects like rattle staffs. While Benin is patriarchal (men and their male sons lead), women are important; men cannot succeed spiritually or politically without them.

Object facts

• Title: Hen
• Date: 1900s
• Culture: Nigeria, Benin Kingdom, Ẹdo peoples, member(s) of the Igbesanmwan (wood and ivory carvers) guild
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: wood
• Dimensions: Overall: 47.6 cm (18 3/4 in.)
• Collection: African Art
• Department: African Art
• Accession number: 1973.221

A detail from the museum

The interlacing pattern on the base of this sculpture can be seen in Benin Kingdom works in materials from wood to ivory to metal.

Collection credit

Gift of Katherine C. White

Further reading listed by the museum

• "The Year in Review for 1968." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, 61, no. 2 (February 1974): 31-78.
• Fagg, William. African Tribal Images; the Katherine White Reswick Collection. [Cleveland]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1968, no. 150.
• Broudy, Elizabeth, Elizabeth Youngblood. Icon and Symbol : The Cult of the Ancestor in African Art. Bloomfield Hills, MI: Cranbrook Academy of Art/Museum, 1975

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.