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Figure
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
The most varied group of soapstone figures and heads has been found in the homelands of the Kissi. Calling them pomda ("images of the dead"), the Kissi placed them in ancestral shrines, offering them the last seeds at sowing times and the first fruits of the harvest. However, the sculptures are believed to have been made centuries ago by the ancestors of the Kissi, the so-called Sapi people.
Cleveland Museum of Art’s own descriptionCredit lineFigure, possibly early 1400s. Africa, West Africa, Sierra Leone, Sapi-style carver. Soapstone; overall: 23.8 x 11.2 x 12.5 cm (9 3/8 x 4 7/16 x 4 15/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Lucile Munro in memory of her husband Thomas Munro, Curator of Education from 1931 to 1967, 1976.29
