A bronze sculpture - Tada - Nigeria
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Holds a postgraduate degree in African studies and 15 years experience in African art.
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A bronze sculpture from Nigeria, attributed to the Tada people and originating in the village of Tada, is an original work in fair condition, about 60 cm high and weighing 17.5 kg, depicting a seated figure with a right-side hip mask and fragmentary arms.
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Description from the seller
This fragmentary sculpture, originating from the village of Tada, represents one of the earliest known instances of this sculptural type in historical record. The figure is depicted in a seated posture, with one foot resting flat on the ground while the other remains in a kneeling position. The left arm, now partially preserved, supports itself on the upright knee, whereas the right arm survives only in fragmentary form.
Significantly, a hip mask adorns the figure’s right side, suggesting symbolic or ritual significance, possibly related to ancestral or spiritual iconography characteristic of Tada sculptural traditions. The surface exhibits numerous smaller perforations, likely the result of prolonged erosion, though they may originally have functioned as attachment points or decorative elements. The lower torso displays linear scarification patterns, indicative of cultural practices of body marking, which may convey social, religious, or status-related information.
The Tada corpus has been the subject of theoretical reconstruction, most notably in Preston Blier’s model of a “complete sculpture,” wherein the fragmentary elements are hypothesized to belong to a full figurative ensemble, balancing seated and kneeling postures, intricate arm gestures, and complementary adornments. Blier’s analysis emphasizes the interplay of formal symmetry and symbolic decoration, positing that the original sculpture would have presented a harmonized representation of social and ritual ideals.
This piece exemplifies the transitional interplay between localized Tada stylistic conventions and broader regional sculptural motifs. The combination of fragmentary preservation, surface ornamentation, and formal posture provides invaluable insight into both aesthetic priorities and the ceremonial functions of sculptural practice in Tada’s historical context.
[This well known Tada scupture was described:
"The style and the extraordinarily thin casting of this naturalistic figure point to its likely creation at Ife...
Based on this specimen, the question arises as to what this highly fragmentary sculpture looked like in its original state.
Suzanne Preston Blier has addressed this issue.
african arts Winter 2012 vol. 45, no.4, paage 74/75]
[Based on this specimen, the question arises as to what this highly fragmentary sculpture looked like in its original state. Suzanne Preston Blier has published a drawing that is supposed to depict the presumed original state. Her assumption is based on a comparison of two similar figures from the same find context. (Penultimate photo sequence)]
We believe that this assumption does not correspond to reality. Without exception, all specimens of this type show serpent heads in the left hand, which either wind around the corresponding hand at their ends or whose ends are grasped by the right hand. (last photo sequence).
Occasionally, it is also a cornucopia that is held in the right hand. We have collected centuries of sculptures of this type (based on TL analyses) as well as more recent copies. All these sculptures have the same subject matter. In a letter, Suzanne Preston Blieg pointed out that the examples we have collected may be copies that do not provide evidence of the sculpture's former appearance.
Blier, Suzanne Preston. The History of African Art. London: Thames & Hudson, 2023.
Blier, Suzanne Preston. Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba: Ife History, Power, and Identity, c. 1300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
TL Analysis Kotalla, 600 years +/- 15,4 %
CAB38731
Seller's Story
Wolfgang Jaenicke’s engagement with African art did not begin in the field or the marketplace but in a quieter, more inward space—among papers, books, and objects that belonged to his father. The archive on Germany’s former colonies was not arranged to tell a single story; it suggested many. It invited scrutiny rather than reverence, and it taught Jaenicke early on that objects are never mute. They carry time inside them—fracture and continuity held in the same form—and they ask to be read as carefully as texts.
For more than a quarter century, Jaenicke has worked as a collector, dealer, and intermediary, though none of these terms quite captures the shape of his practice. What used to be grouped, too casually, under the heading of “Tribal Art” has never appeared to him as a sealed or historical category. It is, instead, a set of living traditions, constantly negotiating the present. His academic training—in ethnology, art history, and comparative law—provided a grammar. The language itself he learned elsewhere. In Mali, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Togo, and Ghana, knowledge emerged slowly, through repeated encounters that hardened into relationships, and through trust built not all at once but over years.
Mali became the gravitational center of this experience. Between 2002 and 2012, Jaenicke lived and worked in Bamako and Ségou, where he ran Tribalartforum, a gallery overlooking the Niger River. The space resisted easy chronology. Sculptures and ceramics shared the room with photography, and works by Malick Sidibé—images of Malian youth in the 1970s, self-assured and exuberant—hung alongside older ritual forms. The effect was not nostalgic but clarifying: past and present did not cancel each other out; they sharpened one another.
The war of 2012 ended this chapter abruptly, as wars tend to do. But it did not dissolve the work. Together with Aguibou Kamaté, Jaenicke regrouped in Lomé, closer to the places where many of the objects originated and to the routes they continue to travel. Since 2018, Berlin has become another point on this map. Galerie Wolfgang Jaenicke now operates opposite Charlottenburg Palace, supported by a small team of specialists. Its focus rests, in particular, on West African bronzes and terracottas—materials shaped by earth and fire, and by forms of memory that resist easy translation.
What distinguishes Jaenicke’s practice is not only its geographical range but its internal tension. Fieldwork is paired with provenance research; commerce is treated as inseparable from responsibility. In collaboration with museums and scholarly initiatives, circulation is framed not as extraction but as an ethical process that remains unfinished. The aim is not to remove objects from the world and seal them off, but to keep them readable within it—to allow them to continue speaking, even as the conditions of their speech change.
This fragmentary sculpture, originating from the village of Tada, represents one of the earliest known instances of this sculptural type in historical record. The figure is depicted in a seated posture, with one foot resting flat on the ground while the other remains in a kneeling position. The left arm, now partially preserved, supports itself on the upright knee, whereas the right arm survives only in fragmentary form.
Significantly, a hip mask adorns the figure’s right side, suggesting symbolic or ritual significance, possibly related to ancestral or spiritual iconography characteristic of Tada sculptural traditions. The surface exhibits numerous smaller perforations, likely the result of prolonged erosion, though they may originally have functioned as attachment points or decorative elements. The lower torso displays linear scarification patterns, indicative of cultural practices of body marking, which may convey social, religious, or status-related information.
The Tada corpus has been the subject of theoretical reconstruction, most notably in Preston Blier’s model of a “complete sculpture,” wherein the fragmentary elements are hypothesized to belong to a full figurative ensemble, balancing seated and kneeling postures, intricate arm gestures, and complementary adornments. Blier’s analysis emphasizes the interplay of formal symmetry and symbolic decoration, positing that the original sculpture would have presented a harmonized representation of social and ritual ideals.
This piece exemplifies the transitional interplay between localized Tada stylistic conventions and broader regional sculptural motifs. The combination of fragmentary preservation, surface ornamentation, and formal posture provides invaluable insight into both aesthetic priorities and the ceremonial functions of sculptural practice in Tada’s historical context.
[This well known Tada scupture was described:
"The style and the extraordinarily thin casting of this naturalistic figure point to its likely creation at Ife...
Based on this specimen, the question arises as to what this highly fragmentary sculpture looked like in its original state.
Suzanne Preston Blier has addressed this issue.
african arts Winter 2012 vol. 45, no.4, paage 74/75]
[Based on this specimen, the question arises as to what this highly fragmentary sculpture looked like in its original state. Suzanne Preston Blier has published a drawing that is supposed to depict the presumed original state. Her assumption is based on a comparison of two similar figures from the same find context. (Penultimate photo sequence)]
We believe that this assumption does not correspond to reality. Without exception, all specimens of this type show serpent heads in the left hand, which either wind around the corresponding hand at their ends or whose ends are grasped by the right hand. (last photo sequence).
Occasionally, it is also a cornucopia that is held in the right hand. We have collected centuries of sculptures of this type (based on TL analyses) as well as more recent copies. All these sculptures have the same subject matter. In a letter, Suzanne Preston Blieg pointed out that the examples we have collected may be copies that do not provide evidence of the sculpture's former appearance.
Blier, Suzanne Preston. The History of African Art. London: Thames & Hudson, 2023.
Blier, Suzanne Preston. Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba: Ife History, Power, and Identity, c. 1300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
TL Analysis Kotalla, 600 years +/- 15,4 %
CAB38731
Seller's Story
Wolfgang Jaenicke’s engagement with African art did not begin in the field or the marketplace but in a quieter, more inward space—among papers, books, and objects that belonged to his father. The archive on Germany’s former colonies was not arranged to tell a single story; it suggested many. It invited scrutiny rather than reverence, and it taught Jaenicke early on that objects are never mute. They carry time inside them—fracture and continuity held in the same form—and they ask to be read as carefully as texts.
For more than a quarter century, Jaenicke has worked as a collector, dealer, and intermediary, though none of these terms quite captures the shape of his practice. What used to be grouped, too casually, under the heading of “Tribal Art” has never appeared to him as a sealed or historical category. It is, instead, a set of living traditions, constantly negotiating the present. His academic training—in ethnology, art history, and comparative law—provided a grammar. The language itself he learned elsewhere. In Mali, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Togo, and Ghana, knowledge emerged slowly, through repeated encounters that hardened into relationships, and through trust built not all at once but over years.
Mali became the gravitational center of this experience. Between 2002 and 2012, Jaenicke lived and worked in Bamako and Ségou, where he ran Tribalartforum, a gallery overlooking the Niger River. The space resisted easy chronology. Sculptures and ceramics shared the room with photography, and works by Malick Sidibé—images of Malian youth in the 1970s, self-assured and exuberant—hung alongside older ritual forms. The effect was not nostalgic but clarifying: past and present did not cancel each other out; they sharpened one another.
The war of 2012 ended this chapter abruptly, as wars tend to do. But it did not dissolve the work. Together with Aguibou Kamaté, Jaenicke regrouped in Lomé, closer to the places where many of the objects originated and to the routes they continue to travel. Since 2018, Berlin has become another point on this map. Galerie Wolfgang Jaenicke now operates opposite Charlottenburg Palace, supported by a small team of specialists. Its focus rests, in particular, on West African bronzes and terracottas—materials shaped by earth and fire, and by forms of memory that resist easy translation.
What distinguishes Jaenicke’s practice is not only its geographical range but its internal tension. Fieldwork is paired with provenance research; commerce is treated as inseparable from responsibility. In collaboration with museums and scholarly initiatives, circulation is framed not as extraction but as an ethical process that remains unfinished. The aim is not to remove objects from the world and seal them off, but to keep them readable within it—to allow them to continue speaking, even as the conditions of their speech change.
Details
Ethnic group/ culture
Tada
Country of Origin
Nigeria
Material
Bronze
Sold with stand
No
Condition
Fair condition
Title of artwork
A bronze sculpture
Height
60 cm
Weight
17.5 kg
Authenticity
Original/official
Sold by
GermanyVerified
protop
Rechtliche Informationen des Verkäufers
- Unternehmen:
- Jaenicke Njoya GmbH
- Repräsentant:
- Wolfgang Jaenicke
- Adresse:
- Jaenicke Njoya GmbH
Klausenerplatz 7
14059 Berlin
GERMANY - Telefonnummer:
- +493033951033
- Email:
- w.jaenicke@jaenicke-njoya.com
- USt-IdNr.:
- DE241193499
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