Information
Steatite head.
This depicts the head of a male Nomoli character.The face is sculpted with features that characterise the African style of these artefacts: a faint head with a prominent nose with flared nostrils, dome-shaped eyes with protruding eyelids, large lips on the chin which includes a well-groomed beard with small tufts, thick circular ears, and a hole in the centre of the skull.It is a stylised head that evokes the characteristic face of the chief of a Sapi, a group of people who were already living in Sierra Leone’s coastal region before 1500.
Provenance
Collezione Walter Schwab, Berna (inv. WS 205);