Product Description
Benin Bronze Head of King Oba, African, Nigeria 20th Century
NIGERIA
Benin Head of King Oba, c. early to mid-20th Century
Lost wax cast bronze with a rich brown and black patina with light desert sand patina in some of the recessed areas.
The art of Benin is the product of an urban royal court, and is meant to symbolize and to extol the power, mystique, grandeur, continuity, and endurance of the ruling dynasty and its governing institutions. From the 14th century until its fall in 1897, Benin was ruled by the Oba, a divine ruler at the head of the political system of titled chiefs. Under royal support, a number of craftsman’s guilds produced bronze, brass, and wood sculptures and embroidered cloth, all of which have become prized by museums and collectors.
These heads were typically placed on altars dedicated to each of the past Oba’s of Benin. The altars are semicircular mud platforms that have been packed hard and rubbed smooth and are located in open courtyards of the palace. The royal altars are the settings for one of the two most important rites of divine kingship in Benin, Ugie Erha Oba, when the Oba honors the spirit of his late father and performs sacrifices to the royal ancestors and to the earth in which they are buried. Acknowledging his role as his fathers’ successor, the chiefs pay homage to the king and greet him in order of seniority. The rite expresses the continuity of divine kingship, and the altar before which it takes place provides the means by which the connection between the living king and his predecessors was established and made.
H: 14 1/2″ x D: 7 1/2″ x W: 8 1/2″
Benin Bronze Head of King Oba, African, Nigeria 20th Century
NORMAN BEL GEDDES (1893 – 1958) USA
Medal 1933 (Commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of General Motors)
Silvered bronze
Signed: Norman Bel Geddes [copyright mark ] 1933
Exhibited: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, May 16-Jan. 7, 2001, Mint Museum of Craft & Design, North Carolina, May 3-July 28, 2002
Illustrated: Johnson, J. Stewart, American Modern 1925-1940: Design for a New Age, Harry N. Abrams & The American Federation of the Arts, 2000, p. 127
Diameter: 3″
This medallion, commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of General Motors, is an example of the Streamlined style that dominated architecture and design in America from the late 1920s to the end of the 1930s. With its abstracted, teardrop-shaped vehicle form depicted in motion, with the tall winglike element rising from its center, the overall effect is one of speed and movement—characteristic of the Streamlined style and appropriate to the automobile and airplane age. Norman Bel Geddes was trained as a theatrical set designer but best known for another project for General Motors, the Futurama exhibition at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. This exhibit, through which visitors were propelled on a giant conveyor belt, depicted a utopian vision of America in the near future, a world dependent on the speed and efficiency of the automobile for work and recreation.