BoW-35 / Akua'ba - Akan (Asante), Ghana

Height: 11 in / 27.9 cm

ex Ellen Piper-Kegel Konietzko (1933-2020), Munich
ex Ron van Doorn, The Netherlands
ex Guilhem Montagut, Spain
Collection Rand Ningali, CO, USA

Published in Akua’ba Asante: Wednesday Child, Ron van Doorn, Herbert M. Cole, 2021, Figure #2803, Plates 8, 38, 46, 72, 79, 89

Wood, pigment, string, beads

Ron van Doorn told me that he and his wife jokingly referred to this figure as “pringle” because of the unique shape of her head since it resembles a Pringle potato chip. When I first got Ron’s book I was immediately drawn to the uniqueness of this particular figure, even though he had two others in the book with somewhat similar heads. In my personal archive of akua’mma figures I have 2 figures that are among my favorites, and they both have a curved head shape similar to this one. They, like this one, are also fairly unique among the corpus, and that is something that I enjoy seeking out.

The head on this figure is slightly tilted to one direction and her triangular chin projects out, and her overall expression is one I interpret as one with attitude. In Ron’s book he states that one out of five akua’mma have marks on the front of the torso, and twenty-five percent have marks on the backs. This particular figure is very uncommon in that it has a rectangular raised section above the chest with incised marks in it, along with a fairly large pattern that runs from above the breast down to the naval. From Plate 89 in Ron’s book it states: “Marks on the back are present in a quarter of Wednesday children. Anatomical marks, like the scapula and the spine are shown in 17%. Dame stated, however, that this y form, indicating the scapula, was meant to repel witchcraft [Dame 1978:}” This figure and BoW-4 have that y-form on the back of the figure, and they also share similar designs on the back of the head. The arms on this figure are also especially short in comparison to most, and I like the fact that they are a little offset from each other.

I am very happy to have “pringle” in my collection now.