Antique Bobo Bracelet – Burkina Faso

Early to mid‑20th century. Bronze, lost‑wax casting. Maximum dimensions: 7.5 cm high × 8.8 cm wide (2.95 × 3.46 in). Weight: 227.5 g (8.02 oz).

This bronze object originates from the Bobo, a Mande‑speaking ethnic group of present‑day Burkina Faso and southern Mali, whose social and religious life is traditionally structured around patrilineal lineages and ritual authority rather than centralized power.

In Bobo cosmology, the remote creator god Wuro is never represented in sculpture. Instead, ritual objects serve as mediators within a world conceived as a fragile balance of opposing forces—such as village and bush, culture and nature—established at creation. Bronze sculptures, cast using the lost‑wax technique, belong to this ritual sphere and are associated with ancestral presence, protection, and the maintenance of cosmic and social equilibrium.

m26Wilf rega