Uli materials and tools

Top, bottom and right: Collected by Winifred Beatrice Yeatman in the 1930s and donated by her in 1975; 1975.3.16, .42 and .51
Centre left: Collected by Mervyn D. W. Jeffreys and donated by the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum in 1942; 1942.13.811Ìgbò people, Nigeria, c. 1930s–1940s

Among the Ìgbò of Nigeria, both men and women decorate their bodies for decorative, social, spiritual or medicinal purposes. Ùlì art used to decorate women's bodies and, in larger form, the walls of clay houses. It got its name from the dye traditionally used to apply the designs to the skin, extracted from several plants known collectively as "ùlì". The patterns were green at first but turned a black colour as the dye reacted with the person's body heat. They lasted about a week.

Three main species of plant provided the dye, most commonly from a fruit pod (shown here) but alternatively from the bean of the second species, or the crushed root of the third. To obtain Ùlì Oba, the most common dye, the fruit is cut open and its juice is squeezed into a dish or bowl like the one here. The liquid is then applied with a thin sliver of wood or a specially forged iron tool. This example with four heads would have been used to create series of parallel lines in precise, sweeping strokes. The sensation of application was said to be a soothing one that often lulled the girl or woman to sleep. According to one collector of ùlì drawings in the 1930s, Captain G. S. Hughman, ùlì was "usually done by women who make a living by this work."

The patterns rendered in a charcoal / ùlì mixture on the piece of paper shown here would have been painted on a girl from the throat downwards as she emerged from a 'fattening room'. Traditionally adolescent Ìgbò girls entered a three-month period of seclusion away from the community in which they were fed calorific foods (fat was equated with beauty and therefore attractive to potential husbands) and instructed on sexual, domestic and religious matters. When the girls re-entered the community they were at the height of their beauty with elaborate hairstyles and wearing little or no clothing, their bodies adorned with black ùlì patterns. Aside from one thick line drawn around the head to emphasise the hairstyle, the designs were densest around those parts of the body that communicated her physical and moral assets as a potential wife – the neck and joints as areas of strength, and the abdomen as the source of fertility.

Most ùlì designs followed a set of aesthetic criteria. Although some designs represented inanimate objects like household pots, most took on natural or animal forms. Here the central motif is a lizard; the series of thick lines at the top represents water flowing, the triangular shape to the left is a bird's tail.