Wood

A milk jug from Uganda, its old cracks stitched closed with metal. Carved wooden vessels here come from Uganda, Ethiopia, Rwanda, the Congo, Mali and Bolivia, with others from China, Japan, Burma, India and Papua New Guinea. Baganda milk jugs, many showing native repairs, were carved for households where cattle meant wealth. Kuba ceremonial libation cups from the Congo, often carved with faces or patterns, were prestige objects for men of rank.

There are Tuareg bowls, a Dinka grain bowl, an Ethiopian milk jug capped in leather, a Dorze calabash, a Tutsi lidded calabash, Yoruba medicine boxes and a Mossi storage vessel with figures. An Aymara libation bowl from the Bolivian Altiplano carries yoked oxen, and a Tami Islands feast bowl, a Burmese gilded offering vessel with a rooster finial and Indian coco de mer water vessels for sadhus go farther still. Set a bowl on a dining table with nothing in it at all. Wood that has held milk tends to look calm about everything else.