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Palm Wine Vessel (kuh mendu)
1900s
- Medium
- Terracotta
- Classification
- Vessels
- Dimensions
- Overall: 45 cm (17 11/16 in.)
- Culture
- Probably Babessi or Bamessing, Cameroon, Cameroon Grassfields-style pottery, unknown female ceramicist
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, African Art
- Credit line
- John L. Severance Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Made by a female potter nearly a century ago, this palm wine vessel represents past and present cultural practices in the Cameroon Grassfields (northwest and western Cameroon). Women in the pottery-producing centers of Babessi and Bamessing hand-built these vessels. Their process alludes to pregnancy, labor, and delivery. Passing knowledge from mother to daughter since at least the 1700s, making pottery is a female economic, social, and artistic contribution. Yet many motifs refer to royal or male power, such as the lizards on this vessel. Elegant palm wine vessels like this were appropriate for ritual and hospitality in Cameroon Grassfields royal courts.
