Thorn Carving

Thorn carvings are miniatures depicting a variety of scenes from Nigerian life. The carvings first began to be made circa 1930. The thorns vary in size; they can be as large as 12.7 cm long and 9.6 cm wide. The thorn wood is comparatively soft and easy to carve; they are traditionally carved by men.

Collected by Dugal MacGregor while he was a teacher at the University of Accra, 1970.

craft; tourist art

The light yellow-brown thorn and the dark brown thorn come from the ata tree; the light red-brown thorn comes from egun trees. The parts are glued together with viscous paste made that was made from rice cooked with water.

Sitting figure representing a person dying cloth. Figure is sitting on a cylindrical object tapering upward. The knees are bent so that the legs are angled frontward and outward with a basket or a vase in between the feet. The arms are bent outward with the darkened cloth in between the hands. Clothes are of a lighter wood colour than the body. On a wood base.