Pause before intervening
Do not clean, oil, wax, glue or dress the figure immediately. Dust, pigment, camwood, indigo, handling polish and older repairs may all carry information. An enthusiastic intervention can erase evidence in minutes.
The first hours after an acquisition should be devoted to observation, records and restraint.
Create a condition record
Photograph the figure from the front, back, both profiles, above and below, then add close views of the face, coiffure, base, beads, cracks and repairs. Record height, material, weight, provenance, seller’s wording, price and date. Keep the original invoice and listing images together.
Test the attribution
Write down what you were told, then separate fact from opinion. Compare the ears, eyes, mouth, hands, torso, base and coiffure with securely published examples. Ask whether all features point toward the same region and period. A good acquisition should become clearer through research, not merely more impressive through repetition.
A wider reading
Comparison is most reliable when it is controlled. Place the figure beside securely documented examples photographed from the same angle and at a similar scale. Compare one system at a time: head and face, then torso and limbs, then base and surface. Photograph the figure from the front, back, both profiles, above and below, then add close views of the face, coiffure, base, beads, cracks and repairs. Similarity in one striking element may be accidental or widely shared; repeated agreement across independent areas is more significant. Contradictions should be recorded rather than explained away.
The history of an Ere Ibeji rarely follows a single clean line. Commission, ritual use, repair, inheritance, sale, collection and publication can each alter the object or the language attached to it. Do not clean, oil, wax, glue or dress the figure immediately. For that reason, an apparently simple description may contain several dates and several kinds of authorship. The carver made the form, but families, ritual specialists, traders, dealers, collectors and restorers may all have shaped what is now seen.
This subject also exposes a recurrent market bias. Collectors often reward features that read quickly in photographs, while quieter structural qualities require time and direct comparison. Write down what you were told, then separate fact from opinion. The more immediate characteristic should therefore be tested against less glamorous evidence: the back of the head, the junction of the arms and torso, the underside of the base, old breaks and the consistency of wear. Those secondary zones frequently decide whether the first impression remains credible.
From observation to judgment
Documentation should accompany the visual argument. Record the observation behind create a condition record, photograph it under neutral light and note the date of the assessment. Photograph the figure from the front, back, both profiles, above and below, then add close views of the face, coiffure, base, beads, cracks and repairs. If the interpretation comes from a publication or another specialist, retain the exact reference and wording. Such discipline does not make collecting bureaucratic; it preserves the difference between what the object shows, what someone remembers and what a later observer has proposed.
Uncertainty is not an empty conclusion. In the context of You Have Just Bought an Ibeji. What Next, it can identify the exact point at which evidence becomes insufficient. Do not clean, oil, wax, glue or dress the figure immediately. Saying ‘possibly,’ ‘related to’ or ‘attributed to the region of’ may describe the state of knowledge more accurately than a confident workshop name. Precision lies in matching the strength of the language to the strength of the evidence, not in producing the narrowest label available.
For the collector, the consequence is concrete. Before allowing pause before intervening to influence price or desire, write down the strongest argument against the preferred interpretation. Write down what you were told, then separate fact from opinion. Then decide whether the object would still matter if its most prestigious label disappeared. A figure that remains compelling after that test possesses an independence that a fashionable attribution cannot manufacture.