A bronze bracelet - Baule - Côte d'Ivoire (No reserve price)
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Selected by Dimitri André
Holds a postgraduate degree in African studies and 15 years experience in African art.
Estimate € 210 - € 250
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Original Baule bronze ankle bracelet from Bouaké region, Ivory Coast; copper alloy with incised geometric patterns, weighing 3.5 kg, 9 cm high and 17 cm deep, in fair condition.
AI-assisted summary
Description from the seller
Baule Carved Bracelet
Origin: Bouaké region, Ivory Coast
Type: ankle ring or foot bracelet
Material: copper alloy, traditionally referred to as bronze or brass
Comparative dating: 19th century–first half of the 20th century, subject to documented provenance and material analysis. Comparable Baoulé ankle bracelets from the 19th and 20th centuries are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Museum of African Art.
Description
The object takes the form of a wide, open ring, nearly circular in plan, with two vertical ends forming a large slit that presumably allowed it to be slipped around the ankle. Its massive body features a faceted cross-section: two oblique bands—one upper and one lower—meet at a continuous central ridge. This construction accentuates the piece's width and gives it an almost architectural presence. The edges of the opening are straight, thick, and slightly irregular, while the interior remains rougher than the exterior surface. The outer surface is almost entirely covered with fine incisions arranged in geometric patterns. One can distinguish crosshatching, diagonal hatching, chevrons, parallel lines, and long vertical bands. These patterns change orientation from one panel to the next and form a dense design that may visually evoke weaving, basketry, or fabric. However, they should not be assigned a specific symbolic meaning without local evidence. The overall color ranges from golden brown to olive, with green patches of copper corrosion, particularly visible near the rim and in the recesses. The blunted edges, scratches, and variations in polish attest to a long history of use and preservation, but are not sufficient to establish the piece's age.
Historical and Artistic Analysis
The closest comparisons are the large, C-shaped Baoulé ankle rings held in several museums. The National Museum of African Art describes these ornaments as emblems of status and wealth, characterized by surfaces covered with incised lines, ribs, and geometric patterns. These examples are generally associated with women's adornment, and some are hollow. The aesthetic of the photographed object relies less on figuration than on the organization of volume and graphic repetition. The central ridge visually stabilizes the ring, while the numerous hatches fragment the light and enliven the metallic surface. The decoration is therefore not a mere addition: it transforms a heavy mass into a visually rhythmic shell. This combination of monumentality, symmetry, and decorative precision is part of the diversity of Baoulé art, which includes sculptures as well as embellished everyday objects and works made of gold or copper alloys. Attributing the piece to the Bouaké region is geographically consistent with a Baoulé origin, but it cannot be proven by style alone. Metal ornaments circulated among owners, markets, and neighboring communities. An old collection record, the name of a village, the name of a foundry worker, or a story of family transmission would therefore be of essential documentary value.
Scientifically Grounded Description
The term "bronze" must be used with caution. Appearance alone does not allow one to distinguish a bronze composed mainly of copper and tin from a brass combining copper and zinc, or from a more complex alloy that also contains lead. The term "copper alloy" is therefore the most precise until X-ray fluorescence analysis has determined the elemental composition. The most likely manufacturing technique is lost-wax casting. In this process, a wax model is encased in clay and then heated to remove the wax. The molten metal is then poured into the resulting cavity. Since the mold is broken after cooling, each casting is, in principle, a unique piece. For hollow objects, the wax can be molded around a clay core that is retained during casting. Similar Baoulé rings in the Smithsonian collection are described as having been cast using the lost-wax process; they are generally hollow and may sometimes have contained small elements that produced a jingling sound. In this case, only an X-ray could confirm the internal structure and reveal a residual core, sound beads, porosity, or previous repairs. Microscopic examination would also help determine whether the patterns were carved into the wax or incised with a chisel after casting. Finally, the green patina indicates the weathering of copper compounds, but it does not, on its own, constitute proof of antiquity.
Social and Ritual Function
The most well-established function is that of a women's ankle ornament, used as a visible sign of wealth, family status, and personal presentation. Museum descriptions explicitly characterize large Baoulé bracelets of this type as emblems of status and prosperity. Their size, weight, and luster made the ornament highly conspicuous. When sound-producing elements were placed inside, it is reasonable to infer that the wearer's movements also produced a rhythmic sound. Use during ceremonies, dances, or public appearances is possible, but no visible characteristics allow this piece to be linked to a specific ritual. It would therefore be an overstatement to automatically identify it as an object of worship, fertility, divination, or initiation. Its potential ritual significance would lie instead in its integration into the ceremonial presentation of the body, the assertion of prestige, and the commemoration of an owner or lineage. Only field research could clarify this function.
Bibliography
Vogel, Susan Mullin. *Baule: African Art, Western Eyes*. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.
Boyer, Alain-Michel. *Baule*. Milan: 5 Continents Éditions, 2008.
Brincard, Marie-Thérèse, ed. *The Art of Metal in Africa*. New York: African-American Institute, 1982.
Apley, Alice. "African Lost-Wax Casting." Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001.
National Museum of African Art. "Anklet," Baule artist, early 20th century, object no. 69-6-8.
The publications mentioned serve for comparative art historical classification. They do not establish the specific cultural attribution, dating, or original use of the sculpture in question.
Copyright and Scientific Documentation
Some of the information and photographs have been generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence and are based on published sources in ethnography, archaeology, and art history. Original texts and photographs may be protected by copyright. All rights held by the respective copyright holders are reserved.
Inv. No. MAZ32820
Informant: Bakari Bouafle
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.
------------
Galerie Wolfgang Jaenicke is a Berlin-based gallery specializing in West African sculpture, bronzes, terracottas, masks, and contemporary African art. It is directed by Wolfgang Jaenicke, whose work combines collecting, dealing, provenance research, fieldwork, and archival documentation.
According to the gallery’s own account, Jaenicke studied ethnology, art history, and comparative law and has worked in the field of African art for more than twenty-five years. His activities developed through long-term engagement in countries including Mali, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Ghana, and Togo. Rather than presenting African art as a closed historical category, he describes it as a continuing cultural tradition shaped by living communities and changing historical contexts.
A particularly important phase of his career was in Mali, where he lived and worked between roughly 2002 and 2012 in Bamako and Ségou. There he operated Tribalartforum, a gallery that combined historical African sculpture with contemporary African photography, including works by Malick Sidibé. The political and military crisis in Mali in 2012 led to the closure of this phase of activity.
Later, together with Aguibou Kamaté, Jaenicke continued working from Lomé, Togo, before establishing a gallery presence in Berlin near Charlottenburg Palace. The gallery places particular emphasis on West African bronzes, terracottas, Benin and Ife-related works, Nok sculpture, Dogon art, Baule sculpture, Senufo objects, and Yoruba material.
One distinctive aspect of Jaenicke’s public position is his repeated emphasis on provenance transparency and restitution debates. On several published object records, the gallery explicitly discusses issues surrounding export documentation, UNESCO conventions, ownership histories, and communication with scholars and restitution researchers. These statements reflect broader contemporary debates about the circulation of African cultural heritage, legality, collecting history, and museum acquisition practices.
The gallery maintains extensive online archives and catalogues documenting hundreds of African objects, including Benin and Ife bronzes, Nok terracottas, Dogon sculptures, Baule figures, Fon objects, Moba figures, and other West African material.
For researchers interested in the history of the African art trade, Jaenicke represents a later generation of dealers compared with figures such as John J. Klejman. Whereas Klejman belonged to the postwar New York market of the 1950s–1970s, Jaenicke’s work has been shaped by contemporary concerns with field documentation, provenance research, restitution discussions, digital archives, and direct engagement with West African networks and artists.
This text is based on AI Information
Baule Carved Bracelet
Origin: Bouaké region, Ivory Coast
Type: ankle ring or foot bracelet
Material: copper alloy, traditionally referred to as bronze or brass
Comparative dating: 19th century–first half of the 20th century, subject to documented provenance and material analysis. Comparable Baoulé ankle bracelets from the 19th and 20th centuries are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Museum of African Art.
Description
The object takes the form of a wide, open ring, nearly circular in plan, with two vertical ends forming a large slit that presumably allowed it to be slipped around the ankle. Its massive body features a faceted cross-section: two oblique bands—one upper and one lower—meet at a continuous central ridge. This construction accentuates the piece's width and gives it an almost architectural presence. The edges of the opening are straight, thick, and slightly irregular, while the interior remains rougher than the exterior surface. The outer surface is almost entirely covered with fine incisions arranged in geometric patterns. One can distinguish crosshatching, diagonal hatching, chevrons, parallel lines, and long vertical bands. These patterns change orientation from one panel to the next and form a dense design that may visually evoke weaving, basketry, or fabric. However, they should not be assigned a specific symbolic meaning without local evidence. The overall color ranges from golden brown to olive, with green patches of copper corrosion, particularly visible near the rim and in the recesses. The blunted edges, scratches, and variations in polish attest to a long history of use and preservation, but are not sufficient to establish the piece's age.
Historical and Artistic Analysis
The closest comparisons are the large, C-shaped Baoulé ankle rings held in several museums. The National Museum of African Art describes these ornaments as emblems of status and wealth, characterized by surfaces covered with incised lines, ribs, and geometric patterns. These examples are generally associated with women's adornment, and some are hollow. The aesthetic of the photographed object relies less on figuration than on the organization of volume and graphic repetition. The central ridge visually stabilizes the ring, while the numerous hatches fragment the light and enliven the metallic surface. The decoration is therefore not a mere addition: it transforms a heavy mass into a visually rhythmic shell. This combination of monumentality, symmetry, and decorative precision is part of the diversity of Baoulé art, which includes sculptures as well as embellished everyday objects and works made of gold or copper alloys. Attributing the piece to the Bouaké region is geographically consistent with a Baoulé origin, but it cannot be proven by style alone. Metal ornaments circulated among owners, markets, and neighboring communities. An old collection record, the name of a village, the name of a foundry worker, or a story of family transmission would therefore be of essential documentary value.
Scientifically Grounded Description
The term "bronze" must be used with caution. Appearance alone does not allow one to distinguish a bronze composed mainly of copper and tin from a brass combining copper and zinc, or from a more complex alloy that also contains lead. The term "copper alloy" is therefore the most precise until X-ray fluorescence analysis has determined the elemental composition. The most likely manufacturing technique is lost-wax casting. In this process, a wax model is encased in clay and then heated to remove the wax. The molten metal is then poured into the resulting cavity. Since the mold is broken after cooling, each casting is, in principle, a unique piece. For hollow objects, the wax can be molded around a clay core that is retained during casting. Similar Baoulé rings in the Smithsonian collection are described as having been cast using the lost-wax process; they are generally hollow and may sometimes have contained small elements that produced a jingling sound. In this case, only an X-ray could confirm the internal structure and reveal a residual core, sound beads, porosity, or previous repairs. Microscopic examination would also help determine whether the patterns were carved into the wax or incised with a chisel after casting. Finally, the green patina indicates the weathering of copper compounds, but it does not, on its own, constitute proof of antiquity.
Social and Ritual Function
The most well-established function is that of a women's ankle ornament, used as a visible sign of wealth, family status, and personal presentation. Museum descriptions explicitly characterize large Baoulé bracelets of this type as emblems of status and prosperity. Their size, weight, and luster made the ornament highly conspicuous. When sound-producing elements were placed inside, it is reasonable to infer that the wearer's movements also produced a rhythmic sound. Use during ceremonies, dances, or public appearances is possible, but no visible characteristics allow this piece to be linked to a specific ritual. It would therefore be an overstatement to automatically identify it as an object of worship, fertility, divination, or initiation. Its potential ritual significance would lie instead in its integration into the ceremonial presentation of the body, the assertion of prestige, and the commemoration of an owner or lineage. Only field research could clarify this function.
Bibliography
Vogel, Susan Mullin. *Baule: African Art, Western Eyes*. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.
Boyer, Alain-Michel. *Baule*. Milan: 5 Continents Éditions, 2008.
Brincard, Marie-Thérèse, ed. *The Art of Metal in Africa*. New York: African-American Institute, 1982.
Apley, Alice. "African Lost-Wax Casting." Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001.
National Museum of African Art. "Anklet," Baule artist, early 20th century, object no. 69-6-8.
The publications mentioned serve for comparative art historical classification. They do not establish the specific cultural attribution, dating, or original use of the sculpture in question.
Copyright and Scientific Documentation
Some of the information and photographs have been generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence and are based on published sources in ethnography, archaeology, and art history. Original texts and photographs may be protected by copyright. All rights held by the respective copyright holders are reserved.
Inv. No. MAZ32820
Informant: Bakari Bouafle
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.
------------
Galerie Wolfgang Jaenicke is a Berlin-based gallery specializing in West African sculpture, bronzes, terracottas, masks, and contemporary African art. It is directed by Wolfgang Jaenicke, whose work combines collecting, dealing, provenance research, fieldwork, and archival documentation.
According to the gallery’s own account, Jaenicke studied ethnology, art history, and comparative law and has worked in the field of African art for more than twenty-five years. His activities developed through long-term engagement in countries including Mali, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Ghana, and Togo. Rather than presenting African art as a closed historical category, he describes it as a continuing cultural tradition shaped by living communities and changing historical contexts.
A particularly important phase of his career was in Mali, where he lived and worked between roughly 2002 and 2012 in Bamako and Ségou. There he operated Tribalartforum, a gallery that combined historical African sculpture with contemporary African photography, including works by Malick Sidibé. The political and military crisis in Mali in 2012 led to the closure of this phase of activity.
Later, together with Aguibou Kamaté, Jaenicke continued working from Lomé, Togo, before establishing a gallery presence in Berlin near Charlottenburg Palace. The gallery places particular emphasis on West African bronzes, terracottas, Benin and Ife-related works, Nok sculpture, Dogon art, Baule sculpture, Senufo objects, and Yoruba material.
One distinctive aspect of Jaenicke’s public position is his repeated emphasis on provenance transparency and restitution debates. On several published object records, the gallery explicitly discusses issues surrounding export documentation, UNESCO conventions, ownership histories, and communication with scholars and restitution researchers. These statements reflect broader contemporary debates about the circulation of African cultural heritage, legality, collecting history, and museum acquisition practices.
The gallery maintains extensive online archives and catalogues documenting hundreds of African objects, including Benin and Ife bronzes, Nok terracottas, Dogon sculptures, Baule figures, Fon objects, Moba figures, and other West African material.
For researchers interested in the history of the African art trade, Jaenicke represents a later generation of dealers compared with figures such as John J. Klejman. Whereas Klejman belonged to the postwar New York market of the 1950s–1970s, Jaenicke’s work has been shaped by contemporary concerns with field documentation, provenance research, restitution discussions, digital archives, and direct engagement with West African networks and artists.
This text is based on AI Information
Details
Ethnic group/ culture
Baule
Country of Origin
Côte d'Ivoire
Material
Bronze
Sold with stand
No
Condition
Fair condition
Title of artwork
A bronze bracelet
Height
9 cm
Depth
17 cm
Weight
3.5 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
AGB
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