Crown (adéńlá) (1900s): Art, History and Details

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

The work and its context

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

The most important of all regalia, topped with the "royal bird" Okin, this headdress connects the king to Oduduwa, the mythical founder of the Yoruba. The veil of beaded strings masks the identity of the wearer and protects his subjects from the supernatural powers that radiate from his face. The crown also signifies the "inner head" of the king, the locus of an awesome life force called ase.

Object facts

• Title: Crown (adéńlá)
• Date: 1900s
• Culture: Africa, West Africa, Nigeria, Yorùbá-style maker
• Type: Garment
• Technique: Cloth (probably cotton and wool), glass beads, reeds, cardboard, wood, plant fiber, cotton, and quills
• Dimensions: Diameter: 26.8 cm (10 9/16 in.); Overall: 105.9 cm (41 11/16 in.); Cone: 35.1 cm (13 13/16 in.); Fringe: 55.3 cm (21 3/4 in.)
• Collection: African Art
• Department: African Art
• Accession number: 1995.22

A detail from the museum

No one––not even the king who wears it––is allowed to look inside this crown, as that's where it is most powerful.

Collection credit

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Petridis, Constantijn. South of the Sahara: selected works of African art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2003.
• Petridis, Constantine. “A Walking Tour: The entire new museum wing by wing, with curators calling out a few favorite works in the collection.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 54, no. 1 (January/February 2014): 8-33.
• Cleveland Museum of Art. Museum Masters: 2016-17 Companion Guide. [Cleveland, Ohio]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2016.

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.