Koma Terra Cotta Funerary Figure

All the face is down at the bottom of this tall, blunt, russet column.

This Koma terra cotta funerary figure is Koma, from Northern Ghana, West Africa. Terra cotta is simply fired earthenware, and in West Africa it has been shaped into figures and vessels for well over a thousand years. Long and tapering, a block with a speckled, grainy surface in rusty brown. The top is broken and rough. Only near the base do two flattened eyes and the start of a nose appear, as if the face were an afterthought. It is 1.5 inches wide, 1.75 deep and 3.25 high.

Mostly column, very little face, and somehow it makes the case.