An impressive Akan female memorial head. The neck is long and grooved, the head is very much elongated with a small snub nose and a small but voluptuous mouth. The coffee bean eyes are protruding, as if they were attached and they are closed, conveying this thoughtful, dreaming facial expression; Remnants of white kaolin, reddish to black patina, the tip of the hairstyle is broken off, but the condition is remarkable compared to the estimated high age.
The cranial deformation, practiced by the Akan people in pre-colonial times is following an ideal of beauty and it is identifying this head as a representation of a member of the aristocratic class. The rarity of the iconography of cranial deformation, archaic style and overall surface condition suggest great age.
Memorial terracottas have a very long tradition in Akan, today's South Ghana. But they are one of the few African art traditions with a first-hand description that also dates back over four hundred years. Pieter de Marees visited the coast of West Africa several times in the late 1500’s and published his often detailed observations in 1602. In a frequently quoted passage about the funerals of “kings” he wrote: “All his possessions, such as his weapons and clothes, are buried with him, and all his nobles who used to serve him are modeled from life in earth, painted and put in a row all around the grave, side by side. Thus their sepulchers are like a house and furnished as if they were still alive . . .” (De Marees, Description and Historical Account of the Gold Kingdom of Guinea (1602), 1987, pp. 184-185). Tom Phillips, Afrika, Die Kunst eines Kontinents, 1996, p. 438) writes that the figures were not situated around the grave but in a nearby sacred forrest and all of them were sculpted by female artists.
The tradition of terracotta funerary art lingered in a few areas of Akan Ghana up until the 1970s. The influence of Christianity and more egalitarian burial practices has led to terracotta sculptures being replaced by painted portraits or photographs at grave sites or in more elite situations life sized cement sculptures.
1.200 - 1.600,- Euro
Height: 23 cm
Length: 30 cm
Weight: 2,2 kg
