To Catch The Eye & Hold The Spirit:
Ritual and Prestige Containers from World Cultures

 by Vanessa Drake Moraga
 

Perhaps it begins, as Bachelard claims so evocatively in The Poetics of Space, with the elemental forms: nest, egg, shell. Add to these a folded leaf or slice of bark, an animal skin, a coconut, a turtle carapace -materials found in nature that fulfilled our first nomadic needs for carrying and storing, and surely suggested our earliest metaphors for containing something precious, life-sustaining. Nests generate twined string, net, basket, woven bag. Brittle ostrich eggs, incised with patterning, make way for lumps of clay, pressed into shape by thumb and palm, then fired and glazed. Wood, whittled, hollowed and carved, replaces bark.

All this knowledge evolves in prehistory - first the fiber arts, by at least 15,000 BC, then pottery, around 6000 BC.1  "Women's work" as Elizabeth Barber designates these entwined traditions, which developed in the domestic realms of hearth and field, compelled by the urge to gather, store, and cook foods and grains. This association with a female principle in earthenware and basketry runs through the course of time, manifesting in visual puns and metaphors having to do with fecundity, nourishment, the belly, and the womb. The techniques may have emerged in different eras or places, but the expertise has usually passed from mother to daughter, and the resourcefulness and creativity of the weaver and potter hold their own with the arts generally commanded by men, such as metal and wood working.

As evidenced by this exhibit, the variety of vessels, receptacles and containers conceived and fabricated by indigenous peoples around the world is surpassed only by the infinite uses to which they were put, and the assortment of raw materials pressed into service. "Usefulness does not prevent a thing, anything, from being art" stated the Bauhaus-trained weaver and designer, Anni Albers - a valuable precept to hold in mind when considering the unpretentious, utilitarian origins of many of these objects. Within traditional societies, moreover, as Roy Sieber noted, even modest utensils can reflect the "intensity" with which they are treated, as well as a "powerful psychic bond between owner and object."2  Arguably, of course, most containers that have been preserved (mostly in ritual or funerary contexts) were already elevated to a special purpose. A serving dish remains that even as it is replenished with sacred food for the ancestors; an ordinary water jar becomes a symbolic vessel in a shrine. Such works may not constitute "art" in the hidebound western sense of the term - but they do indeed embody profound cultural values and aesthetic considerations.

Many display, too, that "additional quality of provocative beauty" that Albers deemed essential to functional design. This trait depends on the eye and hand that succeed in combining practicality with the shape, proportions, and materials suited to the vessel's purpose. A heavy, porous, unbalanced, or overly embellished container for fluids will fail its intended role, though it may serve well as a burial urn. But ancient practice has tended to resolve inconsistencies of form and content, so that the neck of a jar will narrow to channel its flow, a lid or stopper will seal and conceal, and a tight weave ably restrain loose seed.

The right vessel may be concave, spherical, cylindrical, pliable, rigid, boxy, purely organic, or fashioned into a human or animal figure. Surfaces can be modeled, carved, or embossed, then patterned and colored with glaze or pigment, or textured with added or found elements such as beads, cording or fur. Understated or ostentatious - the variables and effects are limited only by the artist's ingenuity or tradition's dictates. Within this diversity, there is a startling universality of forms. Categorizing containers by kind may seem, therefore, a logical solution for a presentation with a broad cultural sweep. Yet, citing the craft specialization that occurs in many societies, Sieber cautioned against such a formalistic approach in his own groundbreaking exhibit African Furniture and Household Objects (1980). Another avenue, then, is to pursue the commonality of themes that are exposed by a cross-cultural juxtaposition of prestige and ritual containers. The conceptual parallels, as much as the aesthetic interplay, are quite revelatory.

To begin with, there is the widely held notion that certain raw materials are inherently symbolic. Clay - of, and like, the earth - is what Robert Farris Thompson describes as a "spirit-embodying" material for Congo cultures, as for so many others.3 In the Andes, it is the camelid wools, used to weave exquisite small bags for sacred coca leaf, that are charged with power derived from the alpaca and vicuña's associations with supernatural forces embodied in mountains and lakes. Natural materials speak of a surrounding landscape: the reeds and sedges from the Great Lakes of central Africa that are worked into fine Tutsi baskets; the kelp, fish skin and marine ivory that turn up in an Inuit basket or box. More than just being at hand - there for the plucking - such resources reflect the connection between maker-user and a particular environment. Of course, exotic components obtained through trade (a cowry shell, a rare feather, a precious metal) are avidly incorporated into traditional objects as well.

Remarkable containers signal special content, which in this case, is twofold. Outward content, which includes iconography or symbolic references may or may not be explicit about inner contents. The inner/outer dynamic unfolds in different ways. A presentation bowl enhances its offering, whether these are kola nuts served to honored guests by the Yoruba or palm wine drunk from an intricately carved Kuba cup. Something concealed or hidden from casual view conveys value, potency, magic - the forbidden, even, or the unknowable. What cannot be seen, except by the privileged or initiated, has impact.

Another idea of universal scope is the connection drawn between containers, containment and the human body. This goes beyond linguistic borrowings, as in the "neck" and "foot" of a jar, or visual allusions to the torso's curve. Since antiquity, African terracottas have been executed in female form or capped with naturalistic heads. Figural Mangbetu vessels wear the hairstyles of the elite; Cameroon pots are decorated with the same protective designs painted or tattooed on human skin.4  Luba ritual vessels and gourds have a woman's shape because her body is the "natural receptacle for spirituality."5  In a different place and medium, the twined "dilly" bags of the Aborigines in Arnhem Land, Australia, represent the womb, hence fertility and creativity.6 While at the other end of the continuum, in the pre-Columbian Americas, huge anthropomorphized ceramic urns, as well as other effigy jars, were primarily associated with mortuary rites and death - either through housing ancestral remains or by being buried themselves as offerings to the dead. The analogy was taken even further by the Mimbres people of the American Southwest, who "ritually killed" their pictorial bowls before entombing them.

Indeed, many vessels are accorded a special function in relation to the spirit world, notably on occasions involving ritual drinking, feasting, or food sacrifices. Among the array of containers for storing the vital liquids (water, milk, honey, blood, oil), we might single out those reserved for fermented beverages, such the chocolate and agave brews drunk by the Aztecs, or the palm wines and beers common across Africa. The objects range in style from the sinuous simplicity of a richly oiled Bamun gourd, to the elegant, tapered form of an Inca aryballo, painted with geometric motifs, and used for brewing the Andean corn beer, chicha.

Drinking in many societies - both ancient and modern - is frequently associated with acts of ancestral veneration. Much of the copious amount of broken pottery found strewn along the ritual Nasca Lines in southern Peru, for example, is thought to have been deliberately smashed in water cult ceremonies directed at mountain ancestors. And just as the Bamileke believe they imbibe spiritual strength from ancestors who pool in the palm wine vessels from which they sip, so, too, do the Zulus commemorate their forebears over the blackened izinkamba, one of their many specialized pots for serving sorghum beer, utshwala.7

Jars, in fact, provide dwelling places for the soul-harnessing it so that it cannot cause harm to the living. The concept, documented among groups in Nigeria, Cameroon, and Congo, is still alive in the New World in the curious African-American "bottle trees" whose branches are festooned with multicolored glass bottles as invocations for protection from the dead.8  Similar thinking must inform the Fang and Kota traditions of keeping revered ancestor skulls in baskets or bark boxes. The head is the "seat of the soul" it is said. Yet in a macabre twist on these practices (for us at least), headhunters, such as the Nagas in northeastern India, also create elaborate baskets to carry the skulls of enemies. And drinking out of the skull of an enemy (or a skull-shaped cup) is not unknown either.

Ritual medicines, along with magic concoctions and efficacious substances, merit fancy receptacles of their own. Culturally significant intoxicants, ranging from the mildly stimulating like tobacco and betel nut, to the vividly hallucinogenic snuffs, are dispensed from calabashes, boxes, and canisters. Indigenous shamans, diviners and healers likewise require places to conceal the tools of their trade. Both the Chokwe divination basket and the Dayak shaman's box are filled with a constellation of organic and fabricated implements that are used to access the supernatural and solve human need.

Artistic elaboration is generally an important aspect of all ceremonial containers - as of containers made primarily to reflect and enhance the status of their owners. The latter objects are often intended for personal use - for instance, Kuba moon-shaped cosmetic boxes for tukula (the red camwood used for beautification), and many chests and baskets made for storing textiles, jewelry, articles of adornment, or the weaver or hunter's kit. Such items for "celebrating the person"9 tend to cultivate creativity, aesthetic refinement and taste, while simultaneously projecting social distinction, wealth or special skill. As repositories of cultural values and activities, moreover, even vessels given over exclusively to display and prestige yield the deeper metaphors of containment. They also exemplify the very human urge to make something beautiful to hold something else.

It is to be hoped that the inventiveness of the containers on exhibit here, as well as the multitude of cultural sources and narratives represented, will fill the gaps and omissions in this necessarily limited survey. After all, it could be said that, collectively, these works of art and ritual contain the world.

Vanessa Drake Moraga is a researcher and writer specializing in textile and tribal art, a contributing editor to Hali Magazine, and author of "Animal Magic and Myth: Images from Pre-Columbian Textiles" (2005).