Kissi Stone Seated Figure

A grinning, hunched stone figure with a mouth full of teeth and a necklace of tiny dots.

Kissi carvers of Sierra Leone, West Africa, made this seated figure in stone, dated to the 17th century. Stone figures of this region, often called pomdo or nomoli, are commonly associated with ancestors and with the fertility of the land. The head is large and rounded, with a wide, open mouth showing teeth and a ring of dotted marks around the neck. Below it the body is squatted, arms drawn in toward the knees. The grey stone is pitted and softened, its edges worn smooth by long handling and weather.

It has outlasted everyone it ever grinned at.