A bronze sculpture - Fon - Benin (No reserve price)

A Fon Bronze figure collected in Cotonou, Benin, of a man seemingly falling with his seat on a wooden platform. Signs of ritual use and age.

Fon bronze figures are small to medium-sized cast metal sculptures associated with the Fon peoples of what is now the Republic of Benin in West Africa. The Fon are the dominant ethnic group of the historical Kingdom of Dahomey, a precolonial West African state that flourished from the seventeenth century and became well-known for its elaborate court culture and artistic production. Fon bronzes are part of this broader material context and reflect both indigenous aesthetics and the metalworking traditions that circulated along the Bight of Benin. These figures are typically made of bronze or related copper alloys using the lost-wax (cire-perdue) casting technique, a method widespread across West Africa that involves modelling in wax, encasing the model in a refractory material, melting out the wax, and then pouring molten metal into the cavity. The prominence of lost-wax casting in the region by at least the fifteenth century is documented in studies of West African bronzes generally.

Bronze figures attributed to Fon makers often depict human or animal subjects in stylized, somewhat abstracted forms, occasionally serving ritual or commemorative functions. In examples offered on the art market and in private or museum collections, Fon bronze figures might represent daily life, such as hunters on horseback or standing male figures, and may carry symbolic accoutrements that relate to social roles or spiritual associations. The royal court of Dahomey employed skilled metalworkers who produced sculptures that could be integrated into ceremonial contexts, although detailed academic literature specifically on Fon bronzes as a distinct corpus is limited compared to the extensive scholarship on the Benin Bronzes of the neighboring Kingdom of Benin in present-day Nigeria. The Benin Bronzes include animal and human figures cast in bronze and brass and are emblematic of the high level of metalworking achieved by specialist guilds working for a royal court in the region.

In Fon culture, metal figures and other metal objects were often linked to religious and ancestral practices. Altar figures made of bronze, brass, or iron, found in domestic and shrine contexts, served as focal points for rituals and communication with the spirit world. In one documented assemblage, Fon bronze altar figures were flanked by manillas – brass rings historically used as currency in West Africa – and placed on ebony stands in family shrines. These figures could depict hunters, executioners, or other personages whose imagery and posture conveyed associations with family history, moral narratives, or protective roles. Such assemblages illustrate how bronze figures functioned within a wider set of ceremonial practices rather than simply as decorative art.

Bronze figures attributed to the Fon are generally dated from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, though the tradition of metal casting in the region extends back earlier and intersects with broader West African bronze traditions. The Fon figures offered in the art market and collected in Europe or North America typically bear patinas and forms consistent with hand casting rather than mass-produced replicas, and their stylistic features reflect both local cultural idioms and the historical backdrop of the Dahomey kingdom’s engagement with trade, religion, and statecraft.

References
Academic discussion of West African bronze casting traditions and methods.
Studies on the Bight of Benin bronze culture and Dahomey metalwork.
Museum and art market descriptions of Fon bronze figures.
Specific examples of Fon bronze and altar figures and associated assemblages.

MAZ08362