Nigeria

Ife Commemorative Bronze Head of Dignitary Cirça 16th century Bronze 12 x 6 x 9 in 30 x 15 x 23 cm Yoruba people; Southwestern Nigeria, West Africa This is a commemorative bronze head from the medieval Ife kingdom that probably represents an important dignitary who was a powerful monarch during the early 16th century at the Ile Ife, court Osun State Nigeria. The lost-wax casting process is a technique used by Ife sculptors to form the shape of the effigy head in a heat-resistant clay-core. This core is then covered with a layer of wax, in which the sculptor models, carves, and incises an image. Secondly, a thin layer of finely ground liquid clay is painted over the wax model then covered with increasingly thicker layers of clay. When the clay is completely dry, the assembly is heated to melt out the wax leaving an empty image or mold of the sculpted image of the head; for the hot molten metal to be filled in where the wax was and hot metal is poured into the mold. The sculptor must turn the complete assembly upside down to pour the hot molten metal, which is generally a mixture of copper alloys or brass. When the molten metal has cooled, the outer clay casing and inner clay core are broken to remove the casted sculpture or head. Provenance: This artifact is an extremely rare and important archeological find from the Ife civilization. The époque of the Ife civilization is presumed to be from the classic period to between the 13th–16th centuries. The results of thermoluminescence testing (report number 18R030519) conducted by the Kotalla Laboratory research facilities in Germany reports that sampling taken from the core of the cast and on the inside of the nose and mouth shows that this artifact was last fired into its present construction approximately 510 years ago, with an actual date reported as 1531 AD, which is consistent with the suggested period of the Ife civilization. and later purchased by Maxwell Price