Ifá divination vessel (àgéré Ifá) (mid- late 1800s): Art, History and Details

Ifá divination vessel (àgéré Ifá) (mid- late 1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The mother figure of this vessel from the Southern Ekiti region represents a devotee who kneels before the gods. The vessel once held the 16 sacred palm nuts essential to divination rituals. The object was used by a priest as a medium through which to communicate with the god of fate, Orunmila, in order to gain insight into an individual’s destiny or to understand the cause of misfortune.

Object facts

• Title: Ifá divination vessel (àgéré Ifá)
• Date: mid- late 1800s
• Culture: Africa, West Africa, Nigeria, possibly Èkìtì State, Yorùbá-style carver
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: Wood and colorant
• Dimensions: Overall: 31.7 x 15.7 x 15.9 cm (12 1/2 x 6 3/16 x 6 1/4 in.)
• Collection: African Art
• Department: African Art
• Accession number: 1994.200

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Fagg, William, John Pemberton, and Bryce Holcombe. 1982. Yoruba, Sculpture of West Africa. 1st ed. New York: Knopf : Distributed by Random House, pl. 15.
• New Orleans Museum of Art, University of Southwestern Louisiana University Art Museum, and Meadows Museum of Art. 1989. Shapes of Power, Belief, and Celebration : African Art from New Orleans Collections. New Orleans, Louisiana: New Orleans Museum of Art, cat. 72.
• Yoruba : Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought. 1989. New York: Center for African Art in association with H.N. Abrams Inc, fig. 229.

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.