Cleveland Museum of Art

Figure

Date

possibly early 1400s

Medium

soapstone

Culture

Africa, West Africa, Sierra Leone, Sapi-style carver

Department

African Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

The most varied group of soapstone figures and heads has been found in the homelands of the Kissi. Calling them pomda ("images of the dead"), the Kissi placed them in ancestral shrines, offering them the last seeds at sowing times and the first fruits of the harvest. However, the sculptures are believed to have been made centuries ago by the ancestors of the Kissi, the so-called Sapi people. Sapi sculptors worked in stone—like in this sculpture—as well as ivory.

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