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J.Arrencivia,
Sopera for Orula, surmounted with babalawo figure, and caryatid
pedestal; cedar, varnish, gold leaf; 30.25” x 12” (diameter
of lid), Havana, 2001. This elaborate vessel for Orunmila’s secets,
his four sets of ikín, consists of a deep, lathe-turned
cedar receptacle, which revolves upon its pedestal. It is replete with
Yoruba-Lucumí cosmological, ritual, and historical iconography.
The naturalistically-carved figure of an African babalawo seated
before his divination tray forms the lid’s knob. The vessel’s
two projecting handles are more abstractly-carved kneeling female goats
(chiva), Orunmila’s principal four-legged sacrificial
animal. The vessel revolves upon a furniture-like base, which features
four kneeling Africans bearing Orula’s secrets upon their heads (caryatid
figures), and four lion’s feet supporting the object as a whole.
The surface iconography varies from decorative naturalistic motifs on
the vessel’s surface and cylinder above the Africans (e.g., the scalloped
descending leaves as the sacred plants with which Orunmila works in concert
with Osain), to the pictographic signs of the zodiac around the base surface,
to the sacred writing of Ifá upon the lid. The lid features the
sixteen odu meyi,the 16 principal signs or letras, which are the pillars of Ifá divination.
Though the feet, circular base, caryatid figures, and tapered vessel shape recall aspects of domestic furniture in the European tradition, the work ingeniously reinterprets Yoruba ritual sculpture. The vertical stacking of distinct bands that reference personages (the babalawo), archetypes (the kneeling servant or captive: sacificial animals and “slaves,” as Arrencivia calls them), events (the divination session), and liturgical practice (the sacrifice of the female goat), is highly characteristic of Yoruba sculpture, including house posts and shrine vessels. Kneeling figures commonly support on their heads and in their hands vessels that contain the deities’ secrets (see Drewal et al. Yoruba: Nine Centuries of Art and Thought, NY: Center for African Art,1989; Thompson, Flash of the Spirit, NY: 1983). Collar de Mazo of Orunmila by Eguin Kolade.
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