African Akan Blackware Stylized Memorial Woman's Head

West Africa, Ghana, Akan / Asante culture. A burnished blackware terracotta head of an idealized woman, mounted on a wooden base. The flattened oval face is crowned by a crest of clustered knobs representing a coiffure, and incised arcs sweep across the crown and band the forehead. Three vertical marks sit between the brows. Narrow, heavy-lidded eyes sit above short horizontal scarification marks, and a long, straight nose leads to small, full lips. Stacked rings at the neck, a sign of beauty and well-being in Akan aesthetics, rest on a cylindrical torso with small breasts that flares into a rounded foot. Idealized heads of this type were made to commemorate the dead. Among the Akan peoples of southern Ghana and the eastern Ivory Coast, modeling fired-clay commemorative heads was traditionally a woman's craft. These portraits of the deceased, idealized rather than literal, were carried in funeral processions. Afterward they were placed with pots and offerings at a site near the cemetery, often called the asensie, or "place of pots." Item # 205643

Estimate:$400

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