Description
This religious statue is designed and hand built of terra-cotta clay by the Akan People of the Republic of Ghana. It functions as a spiritual guardian within the Akan belief system, by conveying a foreboding appearance, with two gapped teeth, protruding ears, and three vertical horns forming a crown. Unlike other African pottery described in these pages, this object is virtually solid, and as such is not intended to contain liquids but rather serve as an object of deep, spiritual reverence. Akan cosmology consists of a senior God who generally does not interact with humans but rather via a medium such as this figure.