Lot 287 Dα

Shortly after the Stolls purchased this door in Nigeria they were visited by the carver, George Bandele, who informed them that the door was the work of Oshamuko, his teacher. Bandele was the son of the master carver, Areogun, but had been apprenticed to Oshamuko rather than to his own father, following their estrangement due to Bandele’s refusal to marry a wife of his father’s choice.
William Fagg saw the door on his visit to the Stolls in Essen when he was assisting Elsy Leuzinger with the selection of objects for her exhibition, "Die Kunst von Schwarz-Afrika", in 1971. He shared Bandele’s view that the door was the work of Oshamuko.

John Picton (in "The Yoruba Artist: New Theoretical Perspectives on African Arts", Washington, D.C., 1994, p.12, and ‘Sculptors of Opin’ in African Arts, Vol.27, no.3, pp. 46-59) discusses the status of Oshamuko. He is known to have worked with Areogun but probably as an assistant rather than an apprentice as their difference in age was probably only one age grade (approximately seven years), not the usual difference in age between master and apprentice. Picton was told by Oshamuko’s own household that he had been apprenticed to another carver, Ajijola-Ogun. It is recorded that Oshamuko died “before he was old”, in other words before he had graduated through the age-grade system, which is likely to have been circa 1945. A pair of posts by Oshamuko, carved for the Atobatele of Iporo, in the 1920s, are now in the Quai Branly Museum (73.1997.4.63 and 64).