STORY OF SACRED WOOD CARVINGS: YORUBA TOWN

THE STORY OF SACRED WOOD CARVINGS: FROM ONE SMALL YORUBA TOWN. BY ULLI BEIER . WITH PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR. EDITED BY D. W. MACROW . Marina, Lagos, Nigeria: "Nigeria Magazine", 1959 [1957].  hardcover, condition: very good.

Scarce.A solid and attractive scarce book. Published more than 55 years ago, this edition is now long out of print .

The carvings function is integrated with the Yoruba religion, which is usually described as 'polytheistic' and 'pagan'. The suitability of these descriptions will be considered later in the book , since the images can only be studied alongside the religion which gave them birth. This study could have taken place in any one of a hundred Yoruba communities. The town of Ilobu was chosen, not because of any special richness in carvings, but because it is typical. Ilobu lies on the northern forest fringe of WEstern Nigeria, There are now some 30,000 people in the town, but much of this size is anew growth of the last twenty years. At the time when the carvings were created there were probably as few as 10,000 inhabitants; and it is essential that the great wealth of sculpture shown should be related to the earlier, smaller figure. There are those for whom the moth balls and glass cases of a museum ahve their appeal. But for those who like their art alive, part of the throbbing vitality of a living people, the only place to seek is in the live culture in which the art is born...

Horst Ulrich Beier , known as Ulli Beier (30 July 1922 - 3 April 2011), was a German Jewish editor, writer and scholar, who had a pioneering role in developing literature, drama and poetry in Nigeria, as well as literature, drama and poetry in Papua New Guinea. His second wife, Georgina Beier , born in London, had a similarly instrumental role in stimulating the visual arts during their residencies in both Nigeria and Papua New Guinea. While at the university, Beier transferred from the Phonetics department to the Extra-Mural Studies department. There he became interested in traditional Yoruba culture and arts. Though a teacher at Ibadan, he ventured beyond it, living in the cities of Ede, Ilobu and Osogbo , to learn more about the Yoruba communities. Due to his subsequent anthropological work among the members of the clans that are native to these places, he was awarded Yoruba honorary chieftaincies . In 1956, after visiting the First Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Paris organized by Présence Africaine at the Sorbonne, Ulli Beier returned to Ibadan with more ideas..."