Water Container (Funjoho)

Arts of Africa

Early/mid–20th century

Senufo
Côte d’Ivoire
Northern Africa and the Sahel

Large lipless water containers like this example with a delicate decorative pattern—which includes crescent motifs suggesting birds in flight—are made by female Senufo potters known as Kpeenbele: a hereditary artisan group whose members are wives of brass casters and weavers. This kind of pot was often given to a woman at her wedding and would be placed on an earthen platform in the main room of the traditional two-chambered home, next to a small personal shrine.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Arts of Africa

Culture: Senufo
Title: Water Container (Funjoho)
Place: Côte d'Ivoire (Object made in)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: Made 1900–1950
Medium: Terracotta and slip
Dimensions: 61 × 61 cm (24 × 24 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of Keith Achepohl
Reference Number: 2005.230

Kathleen Bickford Berzock, For Hearth and Altar: African Ceramics from the Keith Achepohl Collection (The Art Institute and Yale University Press, 2005), p. 69.
Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi, Senufo: Dynamics of Art and Identity in West Africa (The Cleveland Museum of Art and 5 Continents Press, 2015), p. 27.

Art Institute of Chicago, For Hearth and Altar: African Ceramics from the Keith Achepohl Collection, Dec. 3, 2005–Feb. 20, 2006, cat. 27.
Cleveland Museum of Art, Senufo: Dynamics of Art and Identity in West Africa, Feb. 22–May 31, 2015, cat. 14; traveled to Saint Louis Art Museum, June 28–Sept. 27, 2015; Montpellier, France, Musée Fabre, Nov. 28, 2015–March 6, 2016 (Cleveland and Saint Louis only).

Unnamed owner, United States, by 1994; sold to Douglas Dawson, Douglas Dawson Gallery, Chicago, Ill., 1994; sold to Keith Achepohl, Iowa City, Iowa, by 2005; given to the Art Institute, 2005.

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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