The unknown civilisation

Sat, 04 Jun 2005 00:14:50 GMT

My family and I have been stayed in GHANA for 3 years –

from 1989 to 1992.

My wife worked at the French Embassy meanwhile I had plenty time at studying Ghana. A lot of salesmen used to come at home to sell terra cotta statuettes. I was immediately delighted by them. These statuettes were known as of Komaland and dated from the XII th to XVII th century.

As they have been excavated privately I warned the French Ambassador against this kind of business. Unfortunately he wasn’t interested in them. Then I decided to go to Paris and visit Mr P.... a specialist in African Art. In the nineties he was the assistant curator of the African and Oceanian Art Museum (MAAO). He took a great deal of interest in the statuettes but couldn’t succeed in helping me because he had no funds to place in them.

He advised me to buy the more I could in order to avoid their scattering.

From 1989 to 1992 I spared all my time and my money for this purpose…

I succeeded in gathering more than 300 pieces which make up a unit rather representative of this unknown civilisation (enclosure).

The Ghanaian museum authorities weren’t interested in these statuettes and issued all the needed certificates for export.

This passion has never acted as a financial incentive, I have never succumbed to the request of private collectors.

At present all my collection is stored in a warehouse...

My greatest desire is to get the opportunity to admire these terra cotta within a worthy environment and share this pleasure with the greatest number of people.

Consequently I would be very happy to study all the opportunities to organize an exhibition in prestigious museum.

Dany

KOMALAND: art

The unknown civilisation