Container for Valuables

Arts of Africa

Early/mid–20th century

Gur-speaking peoples
Burkina Faso or Ghana
Northern Africa and the Sahel

Among the Gur-speaking peoples, potters use the direct pull method, pushing into a lump of clay to form the pot’s base and pulling upward while rotating the mass to form the walls. They then scrape the clay to consolidate it and to perfect the form. Elegant, round-bodied containers such as this one, which feature a lid cut seamlessly from the body and a flared topknot that acts as a handle, are made by many Gur-speaking peoples and are intended to hold valuables. On this container, the widest expanse and the outline of the lid are accentuated by bands of three or four thinly incised lines highlighted with kaolin; this form of decoration is typical of pots made in northern Ghana and just across the border in Burkina Faso. [See also 2005.229].

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Arts of Africa

Culture: Gur
Title: Container for Valuables
Place: Burkina Faso (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: Blackened terracotta
Dimensions: 34.9 × 31.8 cm (13 3/4 × 12 1/2 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of Keith Achepohl
Reference Number: 2005.232

Kathleen Bickford Berzock, For Hearth and Altar: African Ceramics from the Keith Achepohl Collection (The Art Institute and Yale University Press, 2005), pp. 76-77.

Art Institute of Chicago, For Hearth and Altar: African Ceramics from the Keith Achepohl Collection, Dec. 3, 2005–Feb. 20, 2006, cat. 33.

Eric Ghysels, Ethnographie des 5 Continents, Brussels, Belgium, by 1993; sold to Douglas Dawson Gallery, Chicago, Ill., 1993; sold to Keith Achepohl, Iowa City, Iowa, by 1995; 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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