Oberlin's Sierra Leone Saltcellar: Documenting a Bicultural Dialogue

Oberlin College's Allen Art Museum owns an ivory saltcellar made by a West African artist for a Portuguese client in the late 15th or early 16th century in Sierra Leone. The artist had to consider what foreign and local features to include in this export piece; it conforms in shape to European cups or chalices and depicts some Portuguese, but also includes what appears to be a local motif of dogs confronting snakes. The facial style is decidedly local, resembling the prognathous faces of contemporaneous stone sculptures. The saltcellar is topped with an image of the kneeling Virgin Mary holding the Christ Child, a motif that appears on some similar sculptures from the area. Anomalies in this figure suggest it might not be original; recent x-rays were consistent with the section that the finial ivory was original, but had been recarved. This likely took place after breakage, probably in the 20th century. As such, the ivory allows consideration of how Sierra Leonean both accommodated foreign patrons but were unable or unwilling to shake off all their own training, as well as how a Western restorer, attempting to mimic African style, could not escape his own cultural and artistic conditioning.