Yoruba Wood Carving

Carving was a hereditary specialism in many towns, with workshops known by family name and pupils trained within them, and carvers worked to commission for palaces, shrines and households. Individual masters are known by name from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which is unusual for African sculpture of the period and reflects both local memory and the interest of later collectors and researchers. Demand from palaces and shrines fell as building styles and religious practice changed, and much carving now serves galleries, collectors and churches alongside continuing ritual commissions.

Carvers work with an adze and knives from a single block of wood, roughing out the mass before refining detail, and the finished piece may be blackened, rubbed with indigo or camwood, or left plain. Figures are typically frontal and composed, with emphasis on the head, and proportions are adjusted deliberately rather than copied from life. Veranda posts and palace doors carry figures and scenes in high relief, often arranged in registers.

Carved objects were made to work rather than to be admired: divination trays and cups served Ifa practice, masks and headdresses belonged to masquerade and to specific cults, and palace posts and doors displayed the standing of a ruler. The carver's reputation rested on serving these purposes well, and named workshops competed for major commissions.

Many of these objects were made for the divination practice described in Ifa and for the palaces covered under traditional institutions, including the Oyo Empire.