Rare and Exceptional Dogon Adze, Mali

Rare and Exceptional Dogon Adze, Mali
height 25 1/8in (63.8cm)

Provenance
Gaston de Havenon Collection, New York
Marc and Denyse Ginzberg Collection, New York
Lance and Roberta Entwistle, London and Paris
American Private Collection, acquired from the above in 1992

Published
Robbins, Warren M., African Art - The de Havenon Collection, The Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1971, no. 1
African Arts, 1972, Vol VI, No. 3, p. 47 (Advertisement)
Leloup, Hélène, Dogon, Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, 2011, p. 382, no. 157

Exhibited
African Art - The de Havenon Collection, Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., May 1971
The Great Sculpture of the Dogon, Gaston de Havenon, New York, 3 April - 5 May 1972
Dogon, Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, 4 April - 24 July 2011
Kunst und Ausstellungshalle, Bonn, 14 October 2011 - 22 January 2012

Kate Ezra notes, 'Dogon ritual specialists identified as laggam by Desplagnes sometimes carry an object described as an "axe-club with a sculpted handle" (Desplagnes, Louis, Le Plateau central nigéien, Paris, 1907, 333, figs. 164, 165). [...] The title laggam does not appear in recent literature about the Dogon, but Desplagnes' early account of these ritual specialists allows them to be tentatively identified as binukedine, the priests of binu ancestors. According to Desplagnes, laggam are concerned with totemic animals and are identified by the dugo, or stone pendants, which they must find while in a state of trance in order to be chosen for their position (1907, pp. 332-36). The binu often contact their descendants through the intermediary of an animal that then becomes the totem of that family. The binu also provide a dugo to their descendants, which the binukendine must locate while in trance before he can accede to his title. L-shaped wooden dumolo staffs are found in great number in binu shrines. If the identification of the title laggam with the priest of binu is correct, it is possible that elaborate ceremonial adzes [like the present example], used as staffs for emblems, can also be associated with the worship of these important ancestral spirits.' (Art of the Dogon - Selections from the Lester Wunderman Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1988, p. 95)

This rare and elegant adze is a remarkable work, superbly sculpted with a delicately carved seated couple surmounted vertically by a similarly carved figure; the figure of a snake [now with missing head] winds around the lower half of the shaft; exquisite dark-brown patina with encrusted sacrificial materials.