A Vere couple of bronze sculptures, Nigeria, collected in the Jimeta region, an oxidized patina of different layers. Bronze casting in the region of present-day Jimeta, near the confluence of the Niger and Benue rivers, forms part of the wider sculptural traditions often described as the Lower Niger bronze industry. Distinct from but historically related to the renowned traditions of Benin City and Ile-Ife, these works were produced using the lost-wax (cire perdue) technique and demonstrate a high degree of metallurgical expertise well before sustained European contact. Such bronzes were not conceived as autonomous artworks in the modern sense. Rather, they functioned within complex ritual and social frameworks. Human figures, animal motifs, and emblematic attributes materialized systems of authority, lineage, and cosmological belief. Comparable in function—though distinct in style—to the celebrated Benin Bronzes, they served as emblems of office, commemorative markers, and focal points in ancestral veneration. Installed in shrines or altar contexts, they mediated between the spiritual and terrestrial realms. Bronze itself possessed symbolic potency. Its durability, luminosity, and transformation through fire endowed it with associations of permanence and spiritual efficacy. Casting knowledge was often preserved within hereditary workshops, where technical skill and cosmological understanding were inseparable. The production of such figures was therefore embedded in ritualized procedures and social hierarchies. In this context, a bronze figure was not merely representational but performative: activated through ceremony, embedded in communal memory, and sustained by cycles of ritual practice. Its meaning derived from use, placement, and social recognition rather than from aesthetic contemplation alone. Informant Wassiou CAB36379 Height: 16 cm / 15 cm Weight: 670 g / 675 g