72764

Double Bell (Egogo)

Two bell forms on a long handle; large bell carved with 3 figures: chief standing with arms upheld by attendants; background is elaborately carved with curved interlocking pattern, small bells or facsimiles of same run-up sides of sisturn and along top; one side of top has projecting human figure, on top of small bell is an alligator head holding a human hand. Base is geometrically carved. Large bell originally showed mudfish figure and snake-wing bird.

Ivory

14 1/8 × 3 15/16 × 2 9/16 in. (35.8 × 10 × 6.5 cm)

Written in black ink on inside of bell: "BENIN. BT. OF MR H. LING ROTH. 1898."; written in red ink on inside of bell: "58.160"

early 16th century

1501

Place made: Benin City, Royal Court of Benin, Edo State, Nigeria, Africa

A. Augustus Healy Fund and Frank L. Babbott Fund

Until 1897, Benin Kingdom; 1897, taken from the Royal Palace during the British military raid and occupation of Benin City by Dr. Felix Norman Roth; 1898, collection of Henry Ling Roth, Halifax, England; October 2, 1898, purchased from Henry Ling Roth by Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers, Dorset, England; 1898-1958, collection of the Pitt-Rivers Museum, Dorset, England; 1958, purchased from the Pitt-Rivers Museum by Mathais Komor, New York; October 8, 1958, purchased from Mathias Komor by the Brooklyn Museum.

Edo

Edo

Brooklyn Museum, "Double Take: African Innovations," Long-term Installation, October 29, 2014 - March 19, 2017. Brooklyn Museum, "African Innovations," Long-term Installation, August 12, 2011 - September 28, 2014. University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, "Iyare: Playing the Palace Theater," November 1, 2008 - March 1, 2009. Brooklyn Museum, “Arts of Africa,” Long-term Installation, May 24, 2001 - June 26, 2011. Brooklyn Museum, "Arts of Africa," Long-term Installation, March 9, 1995 - 2001. Brooklyn Museum, Long-term Installation, 1976 - 1982.

Siegmann, William C., Kevin D. Dumouchelle and Joseph Adande. "African Art: a Century at the Brooklyn Museum." New York, NY: Prestel, 2009, cat. 47, 136-37. Ben-Amos 1999, 59, fig. 12. (probably Art, Innovation, and politics in eighteenth-century Benin). “Brooklyn Museum of Art” (Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Museum of Art in association with Scala Books, 1997), 54. Brooklyn Museum. The Brooklyn Museum African Gallery Guides. Pamphlets. New York, 1995. Robbins, Warren M., and Nancy Nooter. African Art in American Collections. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989, 225. Brooklyn Museum. Masterpieces in the Brooklyn Museum. New York, NY: Brooklyn Museum and Harry N. Abrams, 1988, 55. Ezra, Kate A. African Ivories (exh. cat.). New York, NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1984., cat. 15. Williams, Sylvia H. "African Art at the Brooklyn Museum." African Arts 13, no. 2 (February 1980): 53, fig. 21. Roth, H. Ling. Great Benin: Its Customs, Art and Horrors. Halifax, England: F. King, 1903. Reprinted 1968., fig. 224-25. Pitt-Rivers, Augustus Henry Lane-Fox. Antique Works of Art from Benin. London, 1900., 50, figs. 155, 156, 157, pl. 25. Roth, H. Ling.. "Primitive Art from Benin." Studio (December 1898): 174-83, fig. 13. n.a. Bulletin of the Liverpool Museum IV (1898), p. 163, 7- 1898, pl. 25, fig. 1.

58.160

1958 160