Govi's come from the Yoruba ethnic group of West Africa- the group of people whose culture was assimilated into the Santeria of Cuba, Candomble' of Brazil, Vodun of Haiti and the deep South, Gullah of the Sea Islands of SC and Georgia. Traditionally, the govi is a container for the soul of a deceased person... after death, the person's soul hangs out for three years while the 'powers that be' decided where they go- heaven, hell or earth as an ancestral spirit. During these three years the spirit is both vulnerable to control by bad magic (thus zombies, etc) and tends to spy on the living in order to negotiate a better place in the afterlife. ("hey, you think *I* was bad? Do you know what Aunt Selma has been up to? Do you know she wears red drawers?")
The govi was a container- traditionally made from gourds- that was hung in a tree in order to trick the spirit (dead folks are apparently not-to-bright at first) into thinking it was it's 'head' (thus the faces painted on it). The spirit would enter the container, be bottled up for three years, then released. This prevented it from bad-magic control and spying on all your secrets!
In the American south, Govi's appeared in two forms- the clay face jugs and the use of glass bottles. Clay face jugs were originally made by slaves (the earliest signed example is from 1850, David Drake in SC) and appropriated into folk pottery traditions. There was either a misunderstanding or a wicked sense of humor, because White face-jug makers originally made face jugs to hold spirits- but spirits-as-in-booze, not spirits-as-in-dead folks. Now the big potteries make them because they are popular with collectors, the original intention is lost.
Glass bottles are turned upside down to decorate graves- there is a great old graveyard down in Beaufort SC with these. More commonly, they were turned upside down on the end of tree branches- bottle trees. This got all mixed up with the European witch-ball tradition, and bottle trees are used for both containing good spirits and distracting the bad ones. The bottle trees are becoming more popular as a yarden-decorating device... you can buy welded metal 'trees' for your bottles...
The govi's we make in class are fused traditions- of course I teach all of the above stuff, but we combine the glass-bottle tradition with the face tradition..thus the painted bottles. (For awhile we did the clay face jugs, but clay and I are not pals and every time I touch it I get incredibly sick. bleah.) Anyhoo, the bottles in the picture I made this past week for examples- I work along with the students in class. Who are they for? (Left to right) Pink = Granny Wrye (it doesn't really look like her- that isn't the point so much as capturing her ideal of pink femininity) The Green Man (for my old painted green-man car... cars have spirits too!), the blue bottle in the back is actually two people- the left side is female, the right side male (the couple from the house in Rose Hill I almost bought long ago, it was for sale because they were killed in a car crash), Black bottle with pink tear drop and red heart is Marie Leveau (famous Voodoo Queen), and the little bottle is for Kia, a former student. These are a way of remembering- the kids are making bottles about grandparents and pets, celebrities and Jesus.
Memory, dream, mystery, imagination.
