Terracotta Bird Vessel with a Halo Crest

The Crowned Bird

This bird wears its crest like a crown, or a halo. The great disc rises high above the head, worked with circles and still carrying a faint green-grey surface that makes it glow against the warm clay.

But the most surprising detail is lower down. From the breast of the bird emerges a second, smaller head, and the large hooked beak bends down to meet it. It could be read as a parent and its young, a bird feeding its chick, or one creature carrying another.

Birds appear across African art as messengers between earth and sky, and as symbols of care and protection. Whatever the precise meaning here, the piece is full of tenderness as well as grandeur.

The rest of the form is pure elegance: the fanned tail, the spout rising from the back like a handle, the fine lines combed across the body to suggest plumage. It is one of the most inventive shapes in the collection.

A footed vessel in the form of a bird, its long neck topped by a large, disc-shaped crest decorated with stamped circles and traces of a pale green surface. Round eyes are set in broad circular discs, and the hooked beak reaches down to touch a smaller head emerging from the breast.

A tubular spout rises from the back, a fanned tail extends behind, and the rounded body is covered with fine incised lines suggesting feathers.