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an old wooden fan with a handle on a black backgrounda large wooden fan with a bird on top of ita wooden sculpture of a bird on a stand with a black backgrounda wooden sculpture of a bird on a stand against a black backgrounda large wooden paddle with a wooden handle on a black backgrounda large wooden paddle with a wooden handle on a black backgrounda close up of a wooden object on a black background
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Estimate €1,200 - €1,500
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Description
MAHONGWÈ Boho-na-bwete-style reliquary From Oyibi, near Mekambo (Gabon). 20th century. Height: 57 cm Wooden core covered with thin strips of brass arranged horizontally in an extremely tight pattern. Provenance: Pierre Redouin Collection. Description: Brass, like copper, was rare and precious. It came from Angola or Kongo and was obtained through trade with Portuguese ships. The journey inland to reach eastern Gabon was then long and fraught with difficulties. Hence the value of these metal plates, which were intended to honour the ancestors. The Kota, like all the peoples of the region, never remained settled in one place for long. The depletion of the soil on which they grew their subsistence crops led them to move on to a new settlement roughly every three years. During these journeys, given their protective power, the ancestors always accompanied the living. The villages therefore systematically took with them, on their journeys, the protective relics of their notable ancestors. These relics (consisting of a few bone fragments) were held in wicker baskets topped with a figure symbolically representing the spirit of the ancestor. The highly abstract boho-na-bwete figure is therefore intimately linked to ancestor worship. It symbolically represents the soul of a clan-founding ancestor and was inserted into that ancestor’s bone basket, thus establishing the link between the material world (symbolised by the bones) and the spirit world (symbolised by the representation of the ancestor’s spirit). This link served as a channel of communication with the ancestor during the bwété rite. The ancestors were consulted at critical moments in the life of the community (wars, famines, rites of passage). In the figure, the absence of a mouth reflects the world of silence into which the soul of the deceased has passed. Note the traditional mahongwè bun and the ovoid shape of the stylised face. This shape is that of an egg, the beginning of a new cycle of life, mirroring the ancestor’s soul which will reappear in a new physical form through a future birth. Its symbolic presence is evident in Kota myths and tales (the myth of the python and the partridge, the crocodile with golden eyes, etc.). The minimalist lines accentuate the object’s mysterious and sacred nature.
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About the sale The Breath of the Spirits: The Collection of Pierre Redouin and Others
Auction location
Auction time 09/24/2026 at 2:30 PM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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