monarch, Oba Akenzua 11 over 70 years ago, the princess as a child was fascinated by the numerous sculptures, statues and other art works in the palace. "A lot of things in the palace and not just the bronze works alone, made me interested in doing arts. The whole palace is a beehive of arts and culture. It's a like a huge gallery. There were images of Olokun and other goddesses which attracted my interest. They were beautifully made mud sculptures. I used to look at these sculptures a lot and I decided to start making my own too with mud," she disclosed.

She made mud objects which she and her younger ones played with, including a sewing machine. As she narrated: "I used to watch women sewing with machines and I got the idea to make one with mud that I will use to sew and start a business. I made one and told my younger one that if she has anything that is torn, she should bring it and I will sew it for her. So, she will bring a dress and I will tell her to pay one pound and we will start haggling. We were just playing. There was even a time one of the Enogies that came to the palace for a visit came to look at it and he said it was very beautiful. Even my father came and said he had something for me to sew and asked me the price. And I asked him how was I going to sew his beautiful white cloth with a mud machine? He told me I should come later for the money and cloth. All these made me realize that people were appreciating what I was doing."

Doing a man's job

After her secondary education at Holy Child College, Lagos, Princess Elizabeth went to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka to study Arts. Her stay there was however cut short by the outbreak of the Civil War in 1967. She had to hurriedly return to Benin and later took up a teaching job at Itohan Girls' Grammar School in the city. It was there that she took up bronze casting in earnest.

She said: "When I was teaching at Itohan Girls' School, there was this man who used to cast bronze in an old mud house near the school. I used to see guns there and he told me that they were given to him to repair. I didn't know he was making guns for people. What interested me was that he was using bronze as bullets. You know it's very strong. He would put pieces of bronze in a crucible, cover it with charcoal and start blowing the bellows. Within a short time, the charcoal will turn to ashes and I will be looking at the molting bronze which looks like gold."

"I told him I liked the work but he said a woman cannot do it, that if she does it, on the day she wants to deliver a baby, she will have to blow the bellows. He said it was forbidden for a woman to do that kind of work. I now asked him what if the Oba's daughter wants to do the work and he said he had nothing to say to that, that I should go and ask the Oba. He didn't know who I was. But he advised me that I should not cast bronze where there is cement if I don't want to risk my life."

"So, when I got home, I got a crucible, bellows and dug a hole like I saw the man do. And I started casting. I made little figurines. Our compound is all cemented and while casting, a small drop of bronze dropped on the cement. You needed to have seen the way the cement blew up! I now realized what the man at the school said by not casting near cement. But that did not discourage me. I continued. I went somewhere else where there was no cement and continued casting. And I was pregnant all this time. The work is very hard and can even abort a pregnancy. The fire in melting the bronze is always very, very hot-many degrees centigrade high. And to blow the bellows is not easy too. It takes a lot of strength to be able to do it."

After showing the objects to her father who was impressed with her creativity, he sent her to Igun street, where the highly exclusive guild of bronze casting in Benin is located, to learn more about the art. She was the first woman to ever do so in the nearly one thousand years that the art of bronze casting has been practised in Benin Kingdom. "When I told my father that women were forbidden from casting bronze, he now said, "Am I a woman?" That in the past, bronze was made specifically for the Oba and he made the laws concerning it, and women were banned because when they are menstruating, they are considered unclean. And that if there was a prince all these centuries who was interested in casting bronze, he would have done it. But since, it's a princess who is interested after so long, then I can go and do it."

"So, I went to Igun street and was attached to one Osa whose children were involved in casting bronze. The first son went with me to the palace and the Oba told him that he should tell his father that anything I want to know concerning the work, that they should show me. I was always going there. This was in 1976 before I finished my first degree at the University of Benin. I majored in sculpture and I was the only lady among the four students in the class."

Influences

On what influences her work, she said: "It's the every day things I see around me that influence me. The sculpture of the wounded soldier for instance was influenced by the horrors I saw of the civil war. Whenever a soldier especially an officer is wounded or dies in battle, his death is kept away from his men so as not to discourage them from fighting.

The statue of Oba Ovonramwen was influenced by the story of the Oba (my great-grand father) who was sent on exile to Calabar by the British after they invaded Benin. The girl with a book reading is my daughter Peju, as a school girl. It's things around me that influence my work. I use myself as a model too. The statue of the pregnant woman was done when I was pregnant using myself as a model.

"I have exhibited my works in many places such as Goethe Institut in Lagos and many schools. Last year I was in Austria for an exhibition of arts. I didn't take any of my works but I was like a living artwork because I dressed in my traditional outfit like this one and many of the visitors to the exhibition would come and look at me in amazement and take pictures with me. It was an international exhibition and people came from all over the world."

"My satisfaction as an artiste derives from the pleasure people get from my work and the recognition I get. Money cannot buy that. It's priceless."

Erosion of culture

The artiste who has been married to Babatunde Olowu, a businessman, for over four decades has eight children one of whom, Peju Layiwola, an artiste and lecturer at the University of Lagos, has taken after her. "There was a time my brother, Oba Erediauwa called me and said, he heard that women have started casting bronze in Benin. I told him it's only myself and my daughter Peju that are casting bronze and no other woman."

Though no longer casting due to advancing age, the princess has focused her attention and abilities on another aspect of Benin culture, the preservation of its rich cultural heritage. "Our Benin tradition is dying. There's too much foreign culture, languages and religion of subjugation," she lamented.

"Many of our people are turning away from our traditional ways. At the service this morning, you can see that I'm the only princess who dressed in a traditional way. It's my own little way of showcasing our culture. People just dress in anyway they like. For instance, it's an abomination for someone to wear a beaded crown to the palace because it's only the Oba that can wear a crown. This hairdo I'm wearing, (okuku) can only be worn by a princess. There are different types namely ukpohor, etiriege, udaha. But many people are not aware of it so it's one area I'm working on, to educate the people on some of these things so that we don't lose our cultural heritage."