This is a piece which I did for my African Art course at the end of my senior year at the University of Toledo.  It is a replica, of sorts, of the bronze heads of Benin.  The medium I used was plastocene modeling clay.  Everything which is done in red represents regalia made of red coral which the oba (ruler) of the Benin civilization in Nigeria wore.  This style, of course, is largely an abstract representation---the long neck, for example, is exaggerated to indicate the wealth of the oba, represented by the massive red coral neckpiece. This is done in a style from about the 16th-17th century.