“It is because of our fellow man that one carves properly. There is no piece of wood carved well that even an ignorant man will not appreciate.“ - Edo proverb 

This was an interpretation I gave to a proverb in Edo, "Nu dẹ owina ne iwọmwan ai na k’erhan se. Ai miẹ erhan na kae n’Ogbe ne ghi yọ re."

Something wasn't quite right, So, on our social media page, I asked if anyone knows the above proverb in Edo, whether different from the one provided here. Here is the result we got from comments: 

From Paul Osa Igbineweka, a lecturer and Historian: 

"....(The correct phrasing of the proverb) in the Edo language is: "Rhunmwuda owina ne ihuọmwa ẹrẹ ana ka’erhan ẹse. Ai miẹ erhan na kae n’Ogboi ne ghi yọ re." 

Meaning: It is because of another skilled carver as yourself that you carved so well. Otherwise, there is no carving done for a novice that he will not appreciate.

This is an idiomatic expression to say: Better do your work well you never can tell who would examine it.

You may render improper service to a novice who may appreciate it, but at the end it wouldn't tell good of you.”

(added by comment or h/t: Noz Nor)

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Why am I interested in this proverb? Because to read it (even in its incorrect phrasing) one could tell it had to do with matters of aesthetics and the seriousness of craft. In some way, this proverb point to a 'standardization', to a certain degree, whether during apprenticeship or craft training process -- or at least in how the craft or guilds related amongst themselves to their craft and the preservation of training, skills, and so on -- areas hardly mentioned in any writing on 'the art of Africa'. 

As Igbineweka informs us above, the original saying is actually different. But even so, the difference point all the more to exactly what the proverb addressed in its creation: the culture or relations within the guilds, i.e. the tradition of making and the preservation of a code of conduct, of professional expectations and so on. 

Though of course the proverb was likely used by the general public as well to address the doing of a job well -- an aspect sorely missing in today's Nigeria where the notion of 'craftsman' (or women) almost no longer exists.  

My faulty translation (from what was, as Prof. Igbineweka instructs us, an incorrect source to begin with) adds a new meaning, in a sense. In getting it wrong, we have created, here on Architecture of Unforgetting, an additional proverb! Which might as well have existed since it is highly plausible for one to be outside the word of 'in-house guild talk' and still find, from all facet of life in Benin Kingdom of the time, application in "It is because of our fellow man that one carves properly. There is no piece of wood carved well that even an ignorant man will not appreciate". Including the more proper sounding, "It is because of another skilled carver as yourself that you carved so well. Otherwise, there is no carving done for a novice that he will not appreciate." In fact, more so, since, as Igbineweka added in his explanation, a level of not being content with the general view attached to the meaning in the proverb. 

This preference after the more specialist opinion of the object made, for example, is something that seems to have been lost over time in what became 'modern Africa'. We have no culture of the critical eye, and have been told that we form no *standards, that everyone just makes as he or she wishes. In recalling this word, I am certainly not espousing some neocolonial ‘standards’ here, but rather pointing out how we are taught to belief that the measuring of things was something that had to be handed over by foreign or ex-colonizers. Whereas the Edo tell a different story of what was happening in the kingdom of Benin. If we look at other arts found across Nigeria, from the mysterious esi sculptures found as if from an abandoned  atelier in Kwara to the NOK systems, it is easy to see in these an umbrella of the specialist hand, the outside-inside critical eye that kept the making and the production within visible patterning of form. 

The preservation of such proverbs maintain the memory of what it serves, which I have already tried to explain here is the advancement or at least preservation and in particular, caring, over the making of a thing. As I also mentioned earlier, Nigeria fastly became a country where these notions of craft has been lost to indifference. 

Imagine also this proverb as an interchange that people would have had as a process of standardization of beauty or of skill. This is precisely an aspect that one hardly finds in any of those essays of 'africanists' or 'primitivists' as they used to love to call themselves about the art of the various or many nations in Africa. 

Locked in this particular proverb is a reminder of a thing needs doing and how it ought to be well done, which ultimately about keeping with a future (of ability, etc) in a people. Proverbs like these become examples of how memory is locked in the learning and reading and writing of a local language.

The matter of Beauty, of aesthetics, is very much a thing in Edo. How one regards the object and how one attempts to understand what leads one to give to it any time at all. If you make things -- as I do, as many do -- this thought is exactly as well matters of 'intention'. Which is a topic for another day. 

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Royal Amulet, Benin Kingdom
Medium: carved ivory
Year: 1700s
Place: Benin City
Current Location: British Museum, UK

Description: Carved ivory armlet inlaid with brass.

Part of the looted #BeninBronzes currently being hidden from sight by British Museum

Image: Royal Amulet, Benin Kingdom
Medium: carved ivory
Year: 1700s
Place: Benin City
Current Location: British Museum, UK

Description
Arm-cuff, one of a pair; made of ivory inlaid with copper. Formed of two inter-penetrating cylinders. Depicts repeating figures of Oba with mudfish legs, swinging crocodiles in each hand above head.

Part of the looted #BeninBronzes currently being hidden from sight by British Museum