Traditional Bamileke Wooden Door (Simple)
Traditional Bamileke Wooden Door (Simple)
GENERAL DESCRIPTION:
This stunning single-piece wooden carved door looks regal and with good reason. Traditional symbolic motifs that represent the strength, power, authority, wisdom, and leadership of the Fon, the chief (that is, the royal leader or king), are very common with these carved wooden doors from Cameroon.
It can easily be leaned against any surface or hung up on any wall in your home or office. With a little effort multiple door can be converted to a room divider/screen.
BACKSTORY:
BACKSTORY:
Better known for their masks, stools and beadwork, the Bamileke are also known, albeit less known, for making doors. Housing and architecture were influenced by climate, available building material, social use of space and living patterns. For this reason, houses were and are sometimes constructed from a mixture of palm reeds, bamboo, leaves, wood and clay earth, leading to mainly square houses having conical thatched roofs surmounting latticework walls, made of raffia poles with mud-filled interstices. Houses were and are also being made solely of large sun-dried bricks with the distinctive pyramidal thatched roof, which has sadly been replaced more and more by corrugated iron sheets in recent years.
Wood was used to create wooden sculptures that adorn the exterior of the houses, doors and decorated doorframes and posts. These wooden doors could be made solely of wood or they can be embellished with brass. Royal animals and insects such as the elephant, buffalo, leopard, lion, python, scorpion and crocodile and are customarily seen.
The Bamileke/Graffi are native peoples living in the west and Northwest regions of Cameroon. Bamileke settlements, with their rulers/chiefs known as a Fons, consider the Fon to be the spiritual, political, judicial and military leader of the chiefdom and he is the main rational behind most artistic creations.
Routinely, tradition and culture would have it that such major wooden carved pieces have the labour shared amongst several people. A first person harvests the wood, another gives the piece it’s rough form, a carver refines the details, a sander smoothens the surface, a polisher/painter/wax-er finishes it off, and finally, a merchant sells the finished item. It goes without saying that sometimes one person may complete more than one of the steps, but working together as a community is a highly valued and social way of doing things amongst the Bamileke people. Due to the accepted practise of soaking the wood, it is in fact considered a somewhat worrying omen if NO cracks appear with time.
PRODUCT DETAILS:
Type of object: Simple wooden door
Materials: Hand carved Kola wood
Dimensions: 150/170h X 60w X 3d cm
Weight: 14 Kg
Style: Tribal
Geographic origin: Cameroon
Date of manufacture: 2018
Period: 21st Century
Condition: Good
Condition/wear/damage details: Generally, in good condition. Long inconsequential crack the length of the door. It is usual with tribal pieces, due to the nature of the production procedure and the type of wood used to make these doors, for some imperfections to exist. It is part and parcel of the character of the piece and not a fault.
