A Baule Maternity

A Baule Maternity of the Tiebissou region, Ivory Coast, holding a child on her back, the ankles wiht iron rings.

Maternities from the Tiebissou region of central Ivory Coast are distinguished by a combination of stylistic refinement, expressive restraint, and ritual functionality that together mark them as both artistic and social instruments. Unlike maternities from other Baule areas, those from Tiebissou often emphasize an intimate, frontal embrace of the child against the mother’s chest and abdomen, accentuating the biological and symbolic bond between mother and offspring. The facial expression is typically serene, downcast, and contemplative, reflecting the Baule aesthetic ideal of moral and social propriety.

Stylistically, Tiebissou maternities exhibit elongated torsos with smooth, polished surfaces and delicately modelled features, often accompanied by subtle scarification patterns on the arms, shoulders, and chest that convey social identity and lineage affiliation. Pigment traces—commonly red, white, or ochre—appear in the hair, eyes, and body, indicating ritual use and the anointing practices associated with fertility or protection rites. These figures are frequently carved from dense, local hardwoods and finished with adze and knife work, resulting in a tactile polish that accrues from repeated handling over time.

Functionally, the Tiebissou maternities are multipurpose ritual objects: they serve as emblems of fertility, instruments in domestic and lineage rites, and mediators in divinatory or protective practices concerning child health and maternal well-being. Their use is interactive—figures are anointed, touched, and displayed in domestic altars or shrine niches—so that patina and wear are integral to their meaning. Compared to maternities from other regions, the Tiebissou examples often display a higher degree of naturalistic proportion and serenity of expression, reflecting a regional preference for calm, introspective imagery that conveys moral as well as biological continuity.

Footnotes
Baule maternities combine aesthetic, domestic, and ritual functions; Tiebissou examples are notable for emphasizing frontal child-mother contact.
Scarification patterns encode social information such as lineage or age grade and are regionally distinctive.
Surface polish and pigment traces are evidence of ritual handling, offering, and anointing, which form part of the object’s functional biography.
Regional variations within Baule sculpture are subtle; Tiebissou maternities are especially recognized for their calm expression, smooth surfaces, and proportional restraint.
Dense local hardwoods and fine tool work characterize Tiebissou figures, differentiating them from more robust or abstract maternities elsewhere in the Baule area.

Height: 99 cm
Weight: 7,86 kg