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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