Biga fertility doll, Mossi - Lot 39

Lot n° 39
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Estimation :
100 - 120 EUR
Biga fertility doll, Mossi - Lot 39
Biga fertility doll, Mossi Burkina Faso Wood H. 28 cm First published in specialized literature in 1921, in the second edition of Les Mossi. Les Mossi. Essai sur les us et coutumes du peuple mossi au Soudan occidental by abbé Eugène Mangin, carved wooden biga dolls are mentioned in a brief note: "... the little girls have their wooden dolls, and on important feast days, they politely come and show them off with great solemnity, and whoever takes the doll to hold it for a while must give the child a few cowrie shells when he returns it". In 1964, in his study of the Mossi study on the Mossi, a classification of these fertility dolls into three stylistic categories. fertility dolls. Finally, Suzanne Lallemand also provides valuable information in her article published in 1973, "Symbolisme des poupées et acceptation de la maternité chez les Mossi". In it, she explains that, although they have the physical attributes of a mother (ma), dolls are always dolls are still referred to as children (biiga) by young girls, who regard them as such, giving them as such, giving them names and dressing them in pieces of cloth. Our object's remarkable hairstyle is found in many regional styles and, as such, cannot be be considered a distinctive stylistic criterion. This hairstyle is characterized by a long, stylized appendage at the front of the head, reminiscent of the braided hair traditionally worn by unmarried girls, which is then worn on the back of the head back of the head after marriage. The cylindrical body is marked by linear scarification, features a swollen umbilical zone. The protruding, conical chest, a symbol of fertility, illustrates this "archetypal fertility figure", which Ladislas Segy associates with biga dolls. The neck, straight and slender, supports the small, half-spherical head. The whole is enhanced by a superb brown patina, smooth and shiny, testifying to its use not by a young girl, but by a woman wishing to procreate, having lavished successive applications of vegetable oil to activate the effigy's protective power.
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