These figures are guardians at ancestral shrines. The figures are always made in male and female pairs and are placed on the outside front wall of the shrine. Netting is used to hold them in place. Paul Gebauer, a missionary and anthropologist who lived in Cameroon for over thirty years, studied, collected and photographed these types of figures in situ. He noted that the shrines “are elevated on four posts over a fireplace formed of three stones.” Panels with painted pairs of figures were sometimes part of the shrine.
Called Kike, the ancestor figures are generally made of three pith cores from raffia palm that are joined together with strips of the outer bark. According to Gebauer only Mambila artists used pith as sculptural material. The hairstyles on this ancestral pair indicate the dates the figures were created. Like the ones collected by Gebauer now at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Portland Museum the male figure has a coiffure. Gebauer noted that male figures like this one were made before 1940 and “after that date, men began to abandon coiffures and beads.” He also observed that the female figures have no coiffure. Women of the 1930s preferred shaved heads and bodies free of hair. (Gebauer 1979:209-210)
