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38. Three Protective Pendants
19th–20th century
Thomas G. B. Wheelock Collection
a. Crescent Pendant: Female Figure; Nuna, Burkina Faso; Copper alloy; 9 x 8.5 cm (3 1/2 x 3 3/8 in.)
b. Crescent Pendant: Mask; Nuna, Burkina Faso; Copper alloy; 9.5 x 9.1 cm (3 3/4 x 3 5/8 in.)
c. Pendant: Four Figures; Tusya, Burkina Faso; Copper alloy; 7.3 x 7 cm (2 7/8 x 2 3/4 in.)

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38. Three Protective Pendants

ersonal artifacts of an intimate nature, such as bracelets, rings, and pendants, are prescribed by diviners throughout the western Sudan to shield their clients from disease and sorcery. These customized items of adornment both protect and enhance their owner. In addition to drawing from a repertory of classic forms, artists create or adapt images that relate personally to a patron's identity and individual needs.

This genre of adornment includes distinctive cast copper-alloy pendants in crescent form owned by members of Bobo, Lobi, Nunuma, Senufo, and other groups.1 They range from small, relatively simple versions worn by children to more ornate designs commissioned by adult women. In each of the two elaborate examples shown here, the flat surface of the crescent serves as a backdrop for a fully realized sculptural representation that projects from the center and juts out beyond the crescent's boundaries. In one, a female figure extends her arms and holds on to the surface of the crescent with her flat, oversize hands, while her heels rest on the crescent's rim, feet projecting out into space. In the other, a bird's long, curved beak projects out over the rim, its head crowned by the vertical element of a plank mask. The bird featured in this miniature representation of a mask is probably a hornbill, a bird associated with witchcraft and divination.2

Such works were created to help women afflicted with reproductive diseases. Diviners would advise clients suffering from these problems to petition their family's protective spirit for a cure. Often a woman would return to her father's home and have her brothers commission a pendant that featured the family mask, to encourage the spirit of the mask to intervene and facilitate the cure.3

Similarly, figurative compositions cast in copper alloy by the Tusya and Senufo are used as personal protective devices. Versions of these figures are employed in divination, where they are thrown by a diviner, who interprets their position within a larger configuration of elements to determine the client's problems. He may subsequently prescribe a copper-alloy pendant in order for his client to secure the blessings of the spirit causing the ailment.4 In this example, four figures standing side by side give the sense of an impenetrable phalanx, their curved arms joined (except for the arms at either end), hands on hips. Their torsos are narrow columns, each adorned with three large spiral motifs behind which the bodies are barely visible. Their heads are long and narrow, with eyes on either side of a sagittal line extending from the crown of the head to the mouth. The figures are unified at the base by horizontal bands of serpentine design, another sign associated with divine protection.

1. Christopher Roy, Art of the Upper Volta Rivers (Meudon, France: Alain and Françoise Chaffin, 1987), p. 76.

2. Ibid., p. 240.

3. Ibid., p. 76.

4. Ibid., pp. 76–77.