Note on the Stone Nomoli Figures of Sierra Leone

Abstract

Apropos of Arnold Rubin's recent review of Philip Allison's book, African Stone Sculpture (The Art Bulletin, LII, 1970, 348–49), I should like to append some additional information. In the section on the Sierra Leone stone figures known as nomoli or nomori, which were apparently not made by the present inhabitants of the area, Allison states that these figures first came to the attention of Europe in the 1880′s and that the first published mention of them is in T. J. Alldridge's The Sherbro and its Hinterland, London, 1901. Actually there is at least one brief earlier mention of the nomoli (together with an illustration) in an American missionary tract entitled Thompson in Africa, or An Account of the Missionary Labors, Sufferings, Travels, Observations, &c. of George Thompson, in Western Africa, at the Mendi Mission, Cleveland, 1852. Because of the obscurity of this work, I reproduce the single illustration (Fig. 1) and the relevant text (pages 276–77).