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Nigerian String Games Album Page

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A photographic montage of nine Igbo string figures from 1911.
A page from Northcote Thomas's albums showing photographs of string figures and their names. (UK National Archives)

A photograph of a page from one of Northcote Thomas's photograph albums from his second and third tours in Southern Nigeria. The page features a 3x3 grid of nine black-and-white photographs depicting hands manipulating string to create various figurative configurations. These string figures, recorded in 1911, include designs such as 'Trap to catch thief', 'Basket spirits use to carry person', 'Big piece of yam', 'Child of monkey eats and tears its tail', 'Corpse and cloth', 'Big belly of old woman', 'Bull with long horn', 'Net for load', and 'Mask for juju'. The accompanying handwritten notations include both the English names and the local Igbo names, recorded in Thomas's idiosyncratic phonetic spelling. The image documents the cultural practice of akpukba, or string games, as practiced by the Igbo-speaking people in Agukwu Nri and Ebenebe.

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