Bura Figurative Vessel Top Based

Helmet-headed, hollow-eyed, patient.

Heads such as this were made to surmount funerary jars in Bura burial grounds, giving the vessel a quiet human presence. This terra cotta top is from Niger, fashioned sometime between the 11th and 15th centuries. The rounded head has deep-set, hollowed eyes, a softly modeled nose and a small open mouth, and below it the form widens into broad, sloping shoulders. The warm orange clay is pitted and weathered, granular, with the look of long time underground.

Seven and a half inches on a simple black stand. It has outlasted everyone who has ever hurried it.