Pendant

The pendant was obtained during the Students' Ethnographic Expedition ‘Africa 76-77', supervised by the National Museum in Szczecin. The Dogon believed it to be a Tellem product or in imitation of Tellem ornaments made by a Dogon smith. The Tellem were an indigenous people inhabiting the Bandiagara Escarpment in the 11th-15th centuries, before the arrival of the Dogon. In the 1960s, Rogier M.A. Bedauxa, a Dutch archaeologist, explored the caves above the Dogon villages and confirmed the existence of the Tellem culture, in which blacksmithing and foundry-making were known. The pendant in question was cast in bronze using the lost wax method. In many West African cultures, a blacksmith's assistant takes care of making the mould. Only skilful manufacturers can cover the moulds with delicate patterns in the form of thin threads, braids, spirals, balls, stylised human faces or zoomorphic figures.

Katarzyna Findlik-Gawron