Grave object (dibondo), Kongo peoples, Democratic Republic of the Congo

• Kongo women handbuilt the majority of domestic pottery, but male Kongo potters fashioned pipes and bowls for calabash water pipes and vessels with animal and human figures that they sold to outside markets. On occasion, men were observed creating water and cooking vessels for local use. More significantly, men produced important ritual pottery, including Kongo grave objects, the tall, hollow, open-based cylindrical terracotta forms known as mabondo.
• Although 17th-century Europeans described terracottas on Kongo graves that may be linked to mabondo, more recent scholarship suggests that the form originated in the 19th century. Wealthy Kongo commissioned mabondo to commemorate the dead. They were often highly decorated with figures or incised and impressed motifs.
• The diamond motifs with bosses at the corners of this vessel probably represent the journey the Kongo believe humans must take when they die, traveling between the land of the living and the land of the dead.
• Production ceased in the 1930s. Kongo men and women employed similar methods to create their vessels, but the men had exclusive use of some implements.