Reliquary Guardian Figure with Studded Oval Face, in its Basket, Bakota

Carved in wood and sheathed in hammered copper and brass, sheet and wire, each guardian transforms a human face into a radiant geometry. Metal was precious and charged with meaning; its brilliance was believed to ward off harm and honour the dead.

These forms later captivated the artists of early twentieth-century Paris, and they remain icons of African art today.

Here the guardian is set into a woven basket, as such figures once sat over the bundles that held the ancestors’ relics — the way they were meant to be seen.

An oval face of cross-hatched brass, studded with copper bosses at the brow, eyes and cheeks, with a triangular nose and a copper plate at the mouth. A ringed neck leads to angular lozenge legs, sheathed and studded, standing in a full, rounded basket whose rim is bound with twisted fibre. The reverse is plain, dark wood.