- Collection type
- Object
- Description
- Costume of the impersonator of the Ashama Spirit
- Geographical reference
- Date / Period
- Date made: Before 1922
- Date collected
- By 1922
- Acquisition information
- Donated: 1922
- Materials and processes
- Material Textile, Material Pigment, Process Resist Dyed, Process Woven, Process Embroidered
- Dimensions
- Length 1200 mm tassels, Length 3250 mm from top of rod at head
- Object numbers
- Accession number: 1922.23.76
- Research and responses
Marla Berns, from UCLA, and Richard Fardon, from the University of London, examined this costume on 20/6/2007. They identified that it is stencilled, woven and incorporates bits of imported cloth. [AR 2/7/2007]
- Associated publications
- Illustrated in black and white as figure 229 on page 160 of Nigerian Weaving, by Venice Lamb and Judy Holmes (Hertingfordbury: H. A. & V. M. Lamb / Roxford, 1980). Caption (same page) reads: '229 Costume of the Jukun impersonator of the Ashana Spirit. Akya cloth and kyadze strips (in topknot) have been combined. C. K. Meek, 1922. Pittt-Rivers [sic] Museum, Oxford. Also referred to on page 158: 'The ritual importance of akya cloths for the Jukun is indicated by such a cloth which Meek collected and which is now in the Pitt-Rivers Museum of the University of Oxford. It forms part of a masquerade costume said to represent the spirit of the Jukun deity Ashana.' [JC 3 5 2010] Illustrated in a line drawing as Figure 3.10 on page 108 of 'The Ancestral Masquerade: A Paradigm of Benue Valley Art History', by Sidney Littlefield Kasfir (with contributions by John Boston, John Picton, Constanze Weise, John C. Willis, and Jean Borgatti), in Central Nigeria Unmasked: Arts of the Benue River Valley, edited by Marla C. Berns, Richard Fardon, and Sidney Littlefield Kasfir (Los Angeles: Fowler Museum at UCLA, 2011), pp. 101-39. Caption (same page): '3.10 This drawing illustrates an Ashama masquerade collected by C. K. Meek circa 1931 and presently in the collection of the Pitt Rivers Museum. Drawing by Sidney Littlefield Kasfir.' Kasfir writes: 'Meek collected an Ashama masquerade costume for the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.... Both the Ashama and Iwagu versions [of textile masquerade] have cloth streamers at the top, and hidden inside are relics of the deceased such as hair or nail parings, which make this part of the mask both numinous and dangerous. In the Ashama masquerade costume, which Meek was able to collect for the Pitt Rivers Museum, plain strip-woven burial cloth used widely along the Benue is sewn to indigo resist-dyed cloth (fig. 3.10). This stitched and indigo resist-dyed cloth was (and still is) made by both Doma (as odu mele) and Abakwariga (as akya) and exported along a precolonial trade route into the nearby Cameroon Grassfields where it was known simply as "Doma" or "Wukari" cloth. The cloth streamers on the Pitt Rivers Ashama are of tightly woven Jukun kyadze cloth with an indigo weft-inlay design.' (Photocopy of page in RDF.) [JC 28 3 2018] Referred to on page 65 of 'Commentary on "The Art and Material Culture of the Eloyi (Afo) People, Nigeria 1969/70', by Anna Craven', by Sidney Littlefield Kasfir, in African Arts, Vol. 51, no. 1 (Spring 2018), pp. 64-5. Commenting on Craven's discussion of Odadu masquerade, Kasfir points out that 'both its photograph and description are broadly cognate with the Abakwariga Ashama masquerade collected ca. 1931 by C K. Meek for the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford'. For Craven's discussion, see pages 61-62 of 'The Art and Material Culture of the Eloyi (Afo) People, Nigeria 1969/70: A Photographic Essay', by Anna Craven, in African Arts, Vol. 51, no. 1 (Spring 2018), pp. 46-63. [JC 28 3 2018]
Search terms: Clothing Textile, Religion, Ritual and Ceremonial, Theatre and Drama, Mask, Robe