Nigeria Lesson Plan

CULTURAL NIGERIA - THE CALABASH

by Cynthia Oldenkamp

Arts and craft play an important cultural and economic part in Nigeria life. Some form of art or craft is practiced in almost every settlement, and can be identified by ethnic groups. Men and women use local raw materials to make articles of daily use. Craftsman specialize in particular products according to where they live. For a long time Nigerians depended solely on local craftsman to supply the needs off each family or society. Then, as people in different places, developed different skills and specialized in particular products, internal trade began. The students in this activity will use pumpkins/oranges/apples to simulate the craft of calabash gourd carving.

INQUIRY QUESTION

What determines the type of arts and crafts practiced in any location?
How are art and craft affected by cultural and economic parts of Nigerian life?

OBJECTIVES

Students will be aware of what type of arts and crafts are practiced in different regions of Nigeria.
Students will be aware of how arts and crafts are affected by cultural and economic parts of Nigeiran life.

STANDARDS

Standard 10. Understand human systems: The characteristics, distribution, and complexity of Earth’s cultural mosaics.

• Explain how cultural features often define regions by explaining the importance of religion in identifying a cultural region and identifying human characteristics that make specific regions distinctive.

THEMES

Location: relative to major ethnic groups
Place: people’s perception of a place
Interaction: interplay of culture, place, and artistic expression
Movement: emergence of arts and crafts in regions other than original origination
Region: emergence of uniform arts and crafts as a result of similar ethnic groups

MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES

Spatial
Bodily-Kinesthetic
Naturalist

INTERDISCIPLINARY LINKAGES

Mathematics: scale and ratio
History: factors that influence artistic expression of ethnic groups
Physical Science: impact of physical geography on the cultural practices and artistic expression

MATERIALS

Pumpkins (oranges or apples can also be used)
Pumpkin carving tools or pottery tools
Assorted Nigeria designs
Plain paper
Straight Pins
Graph paper
Paint and/or Chalk

ACTIVITY

• Follow process outlined in the suggested reference books or:
• Have students design or copy Nigerian designs onto either plain white paper of graph paper
• Tape the design onto the pumpkin/orange/apple
• Use strait pins or other start pointed object to poke holes in the design. Students should poke holes about every 1/4 inch on all lines
• Use pottery tools or pumpkin carving tools to carve out the patterned design
• Students can paint or chalk design as desired

Calabashes, or gourds, are the fruits of several varieties of creeper, some of which are grown along with farm crops. There are many sizes and several distinct shapes of calabash, and each is put to special uses. The smaller one is made into water or ink containers, or they are split and become dishes or ladles. Large, spherical calabashes are fitted with handles and are used as primitive rafts by fisherman. More commonly, the larger calabashes are cut in halves for holding grain or other dry materials, or they are sold to the pastoral Nigerian groups as milk containers. These are first finished with white clay, which is rubbed over the already carved and dampened surface of the calabash. Hausa often use calabash as musical instruments.

When a large calabash is to be decorated, the ripe fruit, which may have been stored for some months after harvesting, is either sawn in half and cleaned out with a curved knife or opened at one end and soaked in water. When the calabash has been immersed in water, the inner tissue and the outer skin disintegrate and can be easily removed. If it has not been soaked, the outer skin is sometimes scraped with a short metal tool to produce delicate linear decoration, which shows up as a slight tonal contrast.

Several other methods are common: carving and sawing, burning (pyro-engraving) and scorching with heated metal tools, coloring with karan dafi dye, and whitening with clay. Though decorated calabashes are used mainly for practical purposes, Hausa women for decorating their homes collect some. The use of calabashes in this way has now been almost completely superseded by displays of brightly colored enamelware. It is interesting to note that the men do most calabash decoration among the Hausa.

Gourd carving is not common to all African cultures. Sculpture and its related forms have dominated studies in African art. Gourd carving is one of those arts usually not take as a fine art. Not much of the history of such arts has been of interest until recently. However, the numbers of gourd carvers and the influences that affect their practice have been on the increase.

Gourd carving is an exclusive preserve of men of the Nigerian Yoruba tribe. It is practiced in Ogbomoso, Iwo, Ede, Osogbo, Ibadan, Ilorin, Oyo, and only recently Lagos. There are between one and three centers for its practice in each of these towns but Oyo is the major center. Thee origin of this intriguing art is Oko-Irese, which location has been suggest to be around the Igbomina area in the guinea savanna zone of Yorubaland. The exact date of its origin is not know. It is known that the origin of this art predates the fourteenth century.

Motifs in Yoruba gourd carving are eight types: zoomorphic, anthropomorphic, anthropo-morphic, geometric, floral, skeumorphic, man-made objects and texts. Lion, elephant, leopard, viper, ostrich, peacock, fish, goat, crab, scorpion, and ram head are the zoomorphic motifs most often seen. In the late 1980s, the elephant motif had become unpopular. The anthropomorphic motifs are only two: the human hands and the human figure. The human hands are invariably used to illustrate handshake and exchange of marriage rings. The human figures are used in the representation of the twins and the virgin, two signs of the zodiac. The anthrop-zoomorphic motifs are also only two. They are half human-half horse and half human-half fish figures, which are also zodiac symbols.

The geometric motifs are more varied. They are the interface of semi-circles which are done in =various combinations. The floral motifs are said to be head of akoko and an unidentified flowery plant. The Edo ivory ask, the symbol of the international Festival of Arts and Culture and the Nigerian coat-of-arms are the only two motifs under the skeumorphic category. The man-made objects are extensive. The texts are a few Nigerian tribal words.

Engraving, carving, and painting are the three techniques used by Yoruba gourd carvers. In engraving, the glossy outer surface is scrapped and the design engraved on the surface underneath. After the engraving, the surface is painted with efun, a local white chalk, while the engravings are darkened with soft pencil for effective contrast.

Carving is employed in two ways. In the first way, the cuticle is simply scrapped to a shallow depth leaving either the pattern or the background standing as relief. They are sometimes colored with green, red, brown, blue or black enamel paint. In the second way, the motifs are carved with negative spaces around them. Engraving is usually done when text or geometric motifs are used and it is combined with carving. Color is usually not done is these calabashes. Engraving appears to be the oldest of the methods.

Painting and the use of pencil are recent introductions. Motifs are usually depicted in two-dimensional representation. Linear or atmospheric perspective as well as shadows is not represented. In addition, proportion is often distorted and appears to be conditioned by the shape of the gourd itself.

The Yoruba carvers have always seen their efforts as an artistic process. This is the reason for their concern on design arrangement and their painstaking attention to detail. Each carver is confronted at different times with a peculiar shaped gourd, which demands creatively in design. Though the gourd carves have not forsaken their heritages, the various influences on the art motifs is evident. The Yoruba gourd carving motifs are influenced by environmental, historical, social and economic experiences of the culture.

RESOURCES

Related texts on Nigeria culture

Maps of Nigeria

Amazon.com search for calabash results in these references, as well as others

When Art Shares Natures Gift African Calabash by Esther Dagan

The Essential Gourd Art and History in Northeastern Nigeria by Maria Berns and Barbara Hudson

The Complete Book of Gourd Craft by Ginger Summit and Jim Widess

African Art/Definition, Forms, and Styles by R.O. Rom Kalilu