Biga voor moeder van drieling - zeer dicht hardhout van de Khaya senegalensis-boom - Mossi - Burkina Faso

Biga For Mother of Triplets – Mossi – Burkina Faso

In fine state with great age patina all over. It dates to around 1930.

Provenance: Ex – collection of Fousseyni Ouatara, Accra- Brussels. Bought from him by P. Westerdijk in 1989.

This marvellous and very rare type of doll should be seen as a kind of altar honouring motherhood. It was made for a woman who had given birth to triplets, two girls and a boy depicted in small additional carvings at the back of the Biga. The figure is said to be intended to protect mother and children and to commemorate this rare event in a society where the infant mortality rate was and still is very high. The head and the body of this exceptional doll follow the general pattern of this model. The high comb of hair is adorned with beads, which is unusual, whereas the rest of the design is conform the norm, be it in king size execution. Dr. Westerdijk says: “I have only encountered one other such a figure in the fifty or so years of exploring African art in a professional way”.

Literature: to my knowledge no such figure has ever been published.

Dimensions: 68 x 12 x 14 cm.
People / Region: The Mossi live in central Burkina Faso.
Material: very dense hardwood of the Khaya senegalensis tree.
Weight: 1.720 kg.

Sold with handwritten declaration of authenticity by Dr. P. Westerdijk, museum ethnologist and cultural anthropologist specialized, for over 50 years now, in the study of the material cultures in African nations that live south of the Sahara.