Shrine object, Probably Idoma; Nigeria
Ivory, wood, iron, sacrificial material; H. 20"

This rather mysterious object, an elephant tusk, covered in leather and crowned in its open end by a magnificently rendered head, carved in the Idoma style, remains enigmatic owing to the scarcity of documented comparative examples. Another known example features a support that would have allowed the object to sit roughly diagonally, with the head facing forward, though an example in a recent auction catalog has no such feature. Certain correspondences exist between the applied metal decorations on either side of the carved wooden head and iconographic elements on carved ivory trumpets from the Middle Cross River and Benue region. The Gelbard example is the most compelling and visually interesting of the known corpus. The finely detailed head and the vestigial "body" of the tusk, although in direct opposition, are unified in a single, bold, and disturbing creation.