A pair of rare prayer figurines. Ewe, Togo. H 17.5 and 18 cm, made of gray-brownish terracotta with traces of sacrifice. The Ewe are an important ethnic group in southern Togo and the neighboring parts of Benin and Ghana with more than one million inhabitants in Togo alone. In addition to the figures called venavi, which are carved for deceased twins, and the well-known colon figures, they produce clay and terracotta figures for voodoo altars, mainly for Elegba, Mammi Wata and other Orishas, but also terracotta heads and half-figures that serve as altars for the ancestors. Praying figures such as those offered here are extremely rare. Like the finely modeled terracotta buffalo head found in the land of the Ewe and now in the possession of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the use of this pair, which can probably be attributed to the Gljdyi-Ewe, remains completely obscure for the time being. Intact. Provenance: Ex Galerie Dogon, Berlin, acquired in the 1980s.
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