Ile Ife
— — the city the Yoruba say the world began.
Not only on a wall.
“A small city in Osun State, southwestern Nigeria, that Yoruba tradition names as the birthplace of humanity. The Ooni of Ife, who still holds court at the palace at the centre of town, traces a line of succession back through more than fifty rulers. In the early twentieth century, German ethnographer Leo Frobenius unearthed the first of the bronze and terracotta heads that turned the world's understanding of West African art on its head.
Ile Ife, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Ile-Ife sits in Osun State in southwestern Nigeria, about 220 km north-east of Lagos and 80 km east of Ibadan, in the wooded hills of Yorubaland. The city is the spiritual capital of the Yoruba people, who hold it to be the place of creation. Its sacred kingship, the Ooni of Ife, has been maintained continuously through more than fifty named rulers. Modern Ile-Ife has a population of roughly 600,000 and is home to Obafemi Awolowo University, founded in 1962 and one of the largest universities in West Africa.
The annual cycle turns on a calendar of festivals that draws diaspora Yoruba home each year. Olojo, in October, marks the descent of Oduduwa and brings the Ooni out wearing the Aare Crown, said to be over 800 years old. Edi, in the dry season, commemorates the heroine Moremi Ajasoro. Itapa and Obatala festivals honour the white-cloth orisha. The town fills, drums run all night, and the palace courtyards open through the small hours. The university calendar pauses where it can.
The bronzes and terracottas of Ife, dated by most scholars to between the 12th and 15th centuries, are among the most technically accomplished sculpture made anywhere in the medieval world. Leo Frobenius excavated the first heads in 1910; further finds at Ita Yemoo, Wunmonije, and the Ife Museum collection followed through the twentieth century. The naturalism of the faces overturned a century of European assumptions about West African art. The originals are held at the Ife Museum and the National Museum, Lagos.