Jill Salmons discusses her work with carvers in the 1970s

Jill describes how villages around Ikot Ekpene in the 1970s functioned as centres of artistic production. Entire communities engaged in crafts for local markets, although demand declined over time. Living with carving families, she closely observed their daily practices and noted that many works were commissioned for local diviners, reflecting the continued importance of traditional belief systems alongside Christianity.
Transcription of audio:

They came particularly from the villages to the south of Ikot Ekpene and to the north of Ikot Ekpene. To the north is a place called Ikot Abia Osom, which I described as an outdoor factory because most of the people who lived in the village were involved one way or the other with the arts and crafts, which were sold at Ikot Ekpene.

So for example, the women would make raffia weaving, the men would make the carvings. Often the wives would do the painting of the carvings, and it was a very busy village. However, that did change even during the period I was there because there were fewer expatriates in the area and fewer people who wanted to buy the more tourist type of things.

To the south of the area, which is the one I really concentrated on, I chose to live with two carving families. The first one was in a relatively large village, maybe small town called Utu Etim Ekpo and this was particularly important because it was the family called Chukwu, who were descended from very famous carvers, who had been working in the area for well over a hundred years. And I was able to live in a house, which was a concrete house built in the 1930s, where I was given a room in the house.

In contrast, I then stayed with an old carver who lived in a small village called Ikot Obong. He lived in a mud hut with the thatched roof. And again, I had a room in his house.

I tried to watch the carvers all day to see what exactly their... what their daily routine was. And it varied because, for example, the old carver that I stayed with in Ikot Obong, in a very rural area, he was in his eighties and so he didn't want to carve all the time.

But when he did, he carved all day until he had managed to finish the commission. Sometimes if I had to go away for any reason when I came back, I would find that he had stopped carving. So I would then have to reprimand him and get him back on track.

The majority of the carvings produced both in Utu Etim Ekpo and Ikot Obong were for local diviners who were called Idiong or Ikot Ibok who were medicine men or diviners. And people still, even though many of them were Christian, would go to these people if, for example, a woman couldn't give birth, or if there was some tragedy in the family or if they needed some kind of way of explaining what was going wrong in their lives.