Mambila pottery

Mambila terracotta (Southwest region of Cameroon)

Straddling the line that separates Nigeria from Cameroon, the skilled Mambila potters go to great lengths to imagine ancient and mythological beings. One of his favorites is the "magic dwarf", a mocking spirit endowed with magic so powerful that it made the bravest of mortals tremble and who, like a stealthy ghost, knew how to float in the darkness of the Korup forest.
Mythology and oral tradition usually reveal the fears and ambitions of a people, offering useful stories and morals with which children and adults can better navigate their daily lives.
In this case, the Mambila terracottas inadvertently tell us the drama suffered by Equatorial Africa with the passage from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic: The advance of the agricultural ancestors of the Igbos, Mambilas and Bantu was relegating the hunter-gatherer communities of Bedzan, Gyele or pygmies. Baka to the depths of the jungles, until they disappear. Now, those "magical dwarfs" who sang polyphonies in the forest clearings can no longer be found except in beautiful legends... and in the mambila terracottas.
The piece we have in Black Market is a vessel on which a couple of pygmies (man and woman) are arranged, whose mouths are also those of the vessel.

Height: 40.0 cm; Diameter: 18.0cm; Weight: 4.01 Kg