Lot 306 Dα

Kevin Carroll (op.cit.p.161) describes the scenes depicted in the door as follows -
"Top panel: a pipe smoker, a preacher and follower holding books, a woman carrying a calabash, a cyclist (the twisted chain would spin the wheels in the opposite directions!), a flute-player, a soldier with naked prisoner.
Second panel: a woman with a calabash, a keeling woman with a child on her back, a horserider with a gun and prisoner, a soldier with a gun, a man carrying two kegs of gunpowder.
Third panel: a man and woman embracing, two soldiers fighting over a woman, a dundun drummer.
Fourth panel: two women pound yam in a mortar, a soldier bends a cross-bow with his knee and holds an arrow in his mouth, a man carrying two kegs of gun-powder, a priest of "Osanyin"."

Although the door was described by Carroll as “in the style of the Areogun school”, it bears a striking similarity to one in the Nigerian Museum, Lagos, published by William Fagg (in "Nigerian Images", London, 1963, fig.93) which Fagg attributes to the master himself. Both doors have four tiers of very similar figures and are divided by almost identical bands of carved ornament. It is very possible that the two doors were made as a pair.