A wooden sculpture - Prampram - Ghana (No reserve price)
04
days
18
hours
02
minutes
18
seconds
Current bid
€ 4
No reserve price
Expert
Selected by Dimitri André
Holds a postgraduate degree in African studies and 15 years experience in African art.
Estimate € 280 - € 330
 | €4 | |
|---|---|---|
| €1 |
Catawiki Buyer Protection
Your payment’s safe with us until you receive your object.View details
Trustpilot 4.4 | 143856 reviews
Rated Excellent on Trustpilot.
A wooden sculpture titled 'A wooden sculpture' from the Prampram culture in the Southern region of Ghana, a pair of anthropomorphic figures sold with a stand and in fair condition.
AI-assisted summary
Description from the seller
Pair of Prampram Anthropomorphic Figures
Origin: Southern region, Ghana
Possible ritual or shrine function; precise dating and identification not established.
Material: Wood covered with a whitish-beige, matte, and grainy layer, with some gray or reddish traces.
Description
The two sculptures are modeled with nearly identical proportions, but they differ slightly in height, facial modeling, and the condition of their accessories. Each features a large, spherical head set atop a relatively long, cylindrical neck. The face is reduced to a few basic features: two circular perforations indicate the eyes, a faint vertical ridge suggests the nose, and a small incision or cavity marks the mouth. This economy of form gives the faces a silent, fixed, and impersonal expression. The shoulders form a continuous arc from which two short, curved, and tapered arms extend downward, ending without hands. The torso is narrow, cylindrical, and elongated. Several small holes are arranged on the chest, abdomen, and sometimes the head. Two of these, placed symmetrically on the upper torso, may represent nipples, while those along the abdominal axis could indicate the navel, body markings, or attachment points that are now empty. However, not all perforations can be interpreted with certainty: some may be the result of wood-boring insects or wood decay. The pelvis extends directly into two short, tapered legs without feet. No clearly carved sexual characteristics are visible; it is therefore not possible to determine whether the figures represent a man and a woman. Around the hips, fragments of fibrous material—textile or plant-based—remain, partially covered by an earthy substance. These elements may correspond to ancient loincloths, ritual wrappings, remnants of fastenings, or more recent additions. The rods, metal hooks, and black bases are modern display fixtures. The entire surface is covered with a whitish-beige, matte, and grainy layer, with a few gray or reddish traces. This could be light-colored clay, kaolin, chalk, ash, or a ritual mixture, but photographic examination does not allow for a determination of its composition.
Historical and Artistic Analysis
The sculptural language is based on a radical reduction of the human body. The spherical head dominates the composition, while the neck, torso, arms, and legs are reduced to simple volumes. The sculptor does not appear to be seeking an individual portrait or anatomical realism, but rather a vertical, frontal, and immediately recognizable presence. The repetition of the two forms reinforces the idea of a whole conceived as a visual unit. The pair may evoke complementarity, kinship, filiation, or the duplication of a single spiritual presence. However, there is no evidence that it necessarily represents a married couple, nor even that the two sculptures have always been associated. Their technical and formal similarity nevertheless suggests the same workshop or a closely related production. This austerity finds a general parallel in certain Dangme religious arts. Nii Otokunor Quarcoopome demonstrates that Dangme religious monuments frequently favor sober, geometric, and minimally figurative forms, whose meaning depends less on ornamentation than on their location, their invisible contents, and their ritual activation. Sanctuaries and altars are understood as anchor points for deities, ancestors, and kinship groups. The stylistic designation "Prampram," however, remains tenuous. The corpus of sculptures marketed under this name has not yet been the subject of an academic monograph or a sufficiently in-depth comparative study. The connections sometimes suggested with Moba figures from northern Togo and Ghana are based primarily on formal analogies and provenance information derived from the market; they do not demonstrate a direct historical lineage.
Scientifically Grounded Description
A rigorous attribution would first require the identification of the wood species. Microscopic anatomy, possibly supplemented by chemical analysis such as DART-MS spectrometry, could compare a micro-sample to West African reference wood samples. The Smithsonian emphasizes that botanical identification can shed light on the material's technical characteristics, geographic provenance, and symbolic meanings. The whitish layer should be examined using X-ray fluorescence, Raman spectroscopy, or FTIR to identify mineral elements and any organic binders. X-ray imaging would help distinguish between carved perforations, insect galleries, internal cracks, and repairs. Fiber analysis of the basin would determine whether it consists of textile, bark, plant fibers, or a modern material. These examinations are commonly used by conservation laboratories to study pigments, wood, fibers, internal structures, and restorations.
Ritual Function
Among the Dangme, altars and shrines can embody the identity of a lineage, house consecrated objects, and serve as intermediaries between the living, the ancestors, and spiritual powers. The periodic whitewashing of certain altars accompanies ceremonies, libations, and sacrifices; purification rites also apply to shrines and various sacred objects. In this context, the two figures may have been kept in a family or community shrine, received coatings, wrappings, and offerings, or represented protective presences. The material around the hips and the light-colored layer are consistent with ceremonial handling, but they are not sufficient to prove a specific function. It would therefore be excessive to formally identify them as ancestors, fertility deities, funerary figures, or initiation objects.
Selected Bibliography
Biveridge, Fritz. "Archaeological Perspectives of the Danish-Dangbe Encounter along the Eastern Coastal Belt of Ghana and their Implications for Understanding Dangbe Culture." Ghana Social Science Journal, vol. 13, no. 1, 2016, pp. 119–156.
Cole, Herbert M., and Doran H. Ross. The Arts of Ghana. Los Angeles: Museum of Cultural History, University of California, 1977.
Huber, Hugo. "Adangme Purification and Pacification Rituals (West Africa)." Anthropos, vol. 53, 1958, pp. 161–191.
Quarcoopome, Nii Otokunor. Rituals and Regalia of Power: Art and Politics Among the Dangme and Ewe, 1800 to Present. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1993.
Quarcoopome, Nii Otokunor. "Thresholds and Thrones: Morphology and Symbolism of Dangme Public Altars." Journal of Religion in Africa, vol. 24, no. 4, 1994, pp. 339–357.
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. MAZ33092
Informant: Ouro
Height: 20 cm / 19 cm
Weight: 110 g / 100 g (incl. stand)
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
Pair of Prampram Anthropomorphic Figures
Origin: Southern region, Ghana
Possible ritual or shrine function; precise dating and identification not established.
Material: Wood covered with a whitish-beige, matte, and grainy layer, with some gray or reddish traces.
Description
The two sculptures are modeled with nearly identical proportions, but they differ slightly in height, facial modeling, and the condition of their accessories. Each features a large, spherical head set atop a relatively long, cylindrical neck. The face is reduced to a few basic features: two circular perforations indicate the eyes, a faint vertical ridge suggests the nose, and a small incision or cavity marks the mouth. This economy of form gives the faces a silent, fixed, and impersonal expression. The shoulders form a continuous arc from which two short, curved, and tapered arms extend downward, ending without hands. The torso is narrow, cylindrical, and elongated. Several small holes are arranged on the chest, abdomen, and sometimes the head. Two of these, placed symmetrically on the upper torso, may represent nipples, while those along the abdominal axis could indicate the navel, body markings, or attachment points that are now empty. However, not all perforations can be interpreted with certainty: some may be the result of wood-boring insects or wood decay. The pelvis extends directly into two short, tapered legs without feet. No clearly carved sexual characteristics are visible; it is therefore not possible to determine whether the figures represent a man and a woman. Around the hips, fragments of fibrous material—textile or plant-based—remain, partially covered by an earthy substance. These elements may correspond to ancient loincloths, ritual wrappings, remnants of fastenings, or more recent additions. The rods, metal hooks, and black bases are modern display fixtures. The entire surface is covered with a whitish-beige, matte, and grainy layer, with a few gray or reddish traces. This could be light-colored clay, kaolin, chalk, ash, or a ritual mixture, but photographic examination does not allow for a determination of its composition.
Historical and Artistic Analysis
The sculptural language is based on a radical reduction of the human body. The spherical head dominates the composition, while the neck, torso, arms, and legs are reduced to simple volumes. The sculptor does not appear to be seeking an individual portrait or anatomical realism, but rather a vertical, frontal, and immediately recognizable presence. The repetition of the two forms reinforces the idea of a whole conceived as a visual unit. The pair may evoke complementarity, kinship, filiation, or the duplication of a single spiritual presence. However, there is no evidence that it necessarily represents a married couple, nor even that the two sculptures have always been associated. Their technical and formal similarity nevertheless suggests the same workshop or a closely related production. This austerity finds a general parallel in certain Dangme religious arts. Nii Otokunor Quarcoopome demonstrates that Dangme religious monuments frequently favor sober, geometric, and minimally figurative forms, whose meaning depends less on ornamentation than on their location, their invisible contents, and their ritual activation. Sanctuaries and altars are understood as anchor points for deities, ancestors, and kinship groups. The stylistic designation "Prampram," however, remains tenuous. The corpus of sculptures marketed under this name has not yet been the subject of an academic monograph or a sufficiently in-depth comparative study. The connections sometimes suggested with Moba figures from northern Togo and Ghana are based primarily on formal analogies and provenance information derived from the market; they do not demonstrate a direct historical lineage.
Scientifically Grounded Description
A rigorous attribution would first require the identification of the wood species. Microscopic anatomy, possibly supplemented by chemical analysis such as DART-MS spectrometry, could compare a micro-sample to West African reference wood samples. The Smithsonian emphasizes that botanical identification can shed light on the material's technical characteristics, geographic provenance, and symbolic meanings. The whitish layer should be examined using X-ray fluorescence, Raman spectroscopy, or FTIR to identify mineral elements and any organic binders. X-ray imaging would help distinguish between carved perforations, insect galleries, internal cracks, and repairs. Fiber analysis of the basin would determine whether it consists of textile, bark, plant fibers, or a modern material. These examinations are commonly used by conservation laboratories to study pigments, wood, fibers, internal structures, and restorations.
Ritual Function
Among the Dangme, altars and shrines can embody the identity of a lineage, house consecrated objects, and serve as intermediaries between the living, the ancestors, and spiritual powers. The periodic whitewashing of certain altars accompanies ceremonies, libations, and sacrifices; purification rites also apply to shrines and various sacred objects. In this context, the two figures may have been kept in a family or community shrine, received coatings, wrappings, and offerings, or represented protective presences. The material around the hips and the light-colored layer are consistent with ceremonial handling, but they are not sufficient to prove a specific function. It would therefore be excessive to formally identify them as ancestors, fertility deities, funerary figures, or initiation objects.
Selected Bibliography
Biveridge, Fritz. "Archaeological Perspectives of the Danish-Dangbe Encounter along the Eastern Coastal Belt of Ghana and their Implications for Understanding Dangbe Culture." Ghana Social Science Journal, vol. 13, no. 1, 2016, pp. 119–156.
Cole, Herbert M., and Doran H. Ross. The Arts of Ghana. Los Angeles: Museum of Cultural History, University of California, 1977.
Huber, Hugo. "Adangme Purification and Pacification Rituals (West Africa)." Anthropos, vol. 53, 1958, pp. 161–191.
Quarcoopome, Nii Otokunor. Rituals and Regalia of Power: Art and Politics Among the Dangme and Ewe, 1800 to Present. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1993.
Quarcoopome, Nii Otokunor. "Thresholds and Thrones: Morphology and Symbolism of Dangme Public Altars." Journal of Religion in Africa, vol. 24, no. 4, 1994, pp. 339–357.
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. MAZ33092
Informant: Ouro
Height: 20 cm / 19 cm
Weight: 110 g / 100 g (incl. stand)
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
Prampram
Country of Origin
Ghana
Material
Wood
Sold with stand
Yes
Condition
Fair condition
Title of artwork
A wooden sculpture
Height
20 cm
Weight
210 g
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
AGB des Verkäufers. Mit einem Gebot auf dieses Los akzeptieren Sie ebenfalls die AGB des Verkäufers.
Widerrufsbelehrung
- Frist: 14 Tage sowie gemäß den hier angegebenen Bedingungen
- Rücksendkosten: Käufer trägt die unmittelbaren Kosten der Rücksendung der Ware
- Vollständige Widerrufsbelehrung
