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The two-part Yoruba cosmos, why translating orun as "heaven" and aye as "earth" gets it wrong, how the two are joined rather than opposed, and what the calabash image actually claims.

The smith and his god, the paired brass figures that carried the authority of the Ogboni society, the women who built pots without a wheel, the carved and burnt calabash, and the leather trades of Ilorin and Oyo.

Thirty-four Yorùbá proverbs on carving wood, working clay, and the calabash and pot as made objects, on what a maker can and cannot do, and on the work that outlasts the worker, presented with the original, a literal gloss, a named translation, and the situation each is spoken in.