231130 - Antique Terracotta Katsina head - Nigeria

Antique Terracotta Katsina head on display - Nigeria.
This superb and highly characteristic head measures 20 cm in high, including the stand.The head measures 12 cm high.
This Katsina sculpture was collected in my private collection in 1998.
A fragment of a terracotta sculpture in the style of Katsina, Nigeria, depicts the face of a human, characterized by prominent facial features atop the base. An intriguing element of this sculpture is the presence of what appears to be a vestigial appendage extending from the lower portion. The eyes, nose and mouth are all clearly raised from the surface of the face, and finely etched lines form eyebrows and simulate the appearance of coarse, textured hair. Certificate of origin and provenance.
“The geological processes of erosion and accumulation are so intense in West Africa that major landslides have been caused in the space of a few centuries. Unlike in Europe, archaeological work is therefore extremely difficult and is almost exclusively limited to coincidental finds. Such a coincidence revealed the first evidence of African sculpture outside Egypt in the 1940s. To the place where the first clay head was found in the village of Jaba in the Zaira province of Nigeria, which was found as early as 1928.
Source: Karl Ferdinand Schaedler, Erde und Era, 2500 Jahre Afrikasnische Kunst aus Terrakotta und Metall, Edition Minerva, 1997, p.195.