Traditional arts and craft of Nigeria

Textile

Adire

Adire is the resist-dyed indigo cloth of the Yoruba south-west, made by blocking parts of a plain cloth so the dye cannot reach them. The word describes the method rather than a single pattern, and the cloth ranges from tightly stitched geometric fields to freely painted starch designs.

Yoruba

Textile

Akwete Cloth Weaving

Akwete cloth is the broad hand-woven textile of Akwete, a town in Abia State in Igbo country. Unlike narrow-strip weaving, it is woven in a single wide piece on an upright loom, and the craft is carried almost entirely by women.

Igbo

Textile

Aso Oke Weaving

Aso oke, literally "top cloth", is the hand-woven strip cloth of the Yoruba, woven in narrow bands on a horizontal loom and sewn edge to edge into wrappers, gowns and caps. It is the cloth of Yoruba ceremony, and its patterns are still commissioned family by family.

Yoruba

Metalwork

Benin Bronze Casting

Benin bronze casting is the court metal art of the Edo kingdom of Benin, in what is now Edo State. Its plaques, commemorative heads and figures were made by a guild of casters working for the palace, and they are among the most widely held African works in museums outside the continent.

Edo

Beadwork

Bida Glass and Beadwork

Bida, in Niger State, is the historic craft town of the Nupe, known for glass bead making and bangles alongside brass work, and its bead makers have long worked in guild-like family workshops.

Nupe

Sculpture

Calabash Carving

Calabash carving is the decoration of dried gourds, practised widely across Nigeria and particularly associated with Oyo in the south-west, with Nupe work in Niger State, and with the Cross River area, where gourds were incised with nsibidi signs.

Pottery

Gwari Pottery

Hand-built pottery among the Gwari people of central Nigeria, in the area around Abuja and Niger State, is a women's craft producing water jars, cooking pots and storage vessels, and it is the tradition from which Nigeria's best-known twentieth-century potter came.

Gwari

Architecture

Hausa Wall Decoration

Hausa wall decoration is the moulded and painted ornament of Hausa architecture in northern Nigeria, applied to the facades and interiors of houses, palaces and city gates in Kano, Katsina, Kaduna and neighbouring states.

Hausa

Sculpture

Ife Terracotta and Bronze Heads

The terracotta and cast metal heads of Ile-Ife, in Osun State, are the naturalistic sculpture tradition of the Yoruba city regarded in Yoruba tradition as their place of origin. The heads are modelled with close attention to individual features, a departure from the more stylised sculpture found in much of the region.

Yoruba

Metalwork

Igbo-Ukwu Bronze Work

The bronzes excavated at Igbo-Ukwu in Anambra State are among the earliest known cast metalwork in West Africa, and they belong to an Igbo community rather than a royal court, which sets them apart from later court traditions.

Igbo

Basketry

Ikot Ekpene Raffia and Cane Craft

Ikot Ekpene in Akwa Ibom State is the best-known centre of raffia and cane work in Nigeria, producing baskets, mats, furniture, bags and hats. The craft is closely associated with the Ibibio and Annang communities of the area.

Ibibio

Sculpture

Nok Terracotta

Nok terracotta is the name given to a body of fired clay sculpture found across central Nigeria, principally in and around Kaduna State and Plateau State. The figures are the earliest known large-scale sculpture in the region, and both their dating and their relationship to any modern people are debated by archaeologists.

Writing system

Nsibidi

Nsibidi is a system of graphic signs used in the Cross River region of south-eastern Nigeria, among the Efik, Ibibio and neighbouring peoples of Cross River State and Akwa Ibom State. The signs were drawn, incised, painted on bodies and walls and made with the hands, and many of their meanings were restricted to initiates.

Efik

Textile

Tiv Cloth Weaving

Tiv cloth is the black-and-white striped hand-woven textile of the Tiv people of Benue State and neighbouring areas, instantly recognisable by its bold vertical bands and worn as a marker of Tiv identity.

Tiv

Body art

Uli Body and Wall Art

Uli is the drawing and painting tradition of Igbo women, applied to the body in dark plant dye and to house and shrine walls in earth pigments. Its line is flowing and asymmetrical, and it was made to be seen for a season rather than kept.

Igbo

Sculpture

Yoruba Wood Carving

Wood carving is among the most developed Yoruba arts, producing shrine figures, masks, house posts, doors, divination bowls and drums across the south-west, including Oyo, Osun, Ogun and Ekiti states.

Yoruba