Shea Butter Jar (Bwéeru or Wéké Gumgia)

The snakes, crocodiles and lizards that embellish this jar have an improvisational quality that is akin to the immediacy of gesture drawing. The jar’s yellowish color suggests it was used to store shea butter, which seeps through the porous walls of a terracotta vessel over time, permanently discoloring it. With its multiple domestic uses, including as an ingredient in cooking and medicine and as lamp fuel, shea butter is an ideal symbol of plenty. Baatombu mothers commission jars like this to give to their daughters upon their marriage, filled with shea butter. The animals on this example probably represent the protective spirits of the owner’s family. [See also 2002.265, 2005.240, and 2005.271].