An important drum "ntan" by Osei Bonsu (1900-1977)
Lutz worked as medical doctor for the Basler Mission in Bawku, Agogo and Bechem in Ghana from 1958 to 1967.
Born in 1930 in Kaying, South China where his parents already worked for the Basel Mission, after his studies he knew that he would like to work as a missionary doctor as did his father. After graduation, he decided to choose Ghana. Beginning in 1958 he worked with his wife Eva-Maria, in a hospital in Bawku in the north of the country, near the border with Burkina Faso, as well as in Agogo and Bechem. In 1967, he returned with his family to Germany.
Description
wood, matt patina, polychrome paint, rising from standing lion, carved with prominent breasts and various emblems and scenic motifs in high relief, suggesting proverbs, much in favour with the Ashanti, writing “KWANCH IABU ANTANF RAYERS”, drum skin from animal hide fixed by wooden plugs and twisted plant fibre, complete with drumstick, rep. (missing part covered by metal sheet), small missing part (tip of right paw), traces of abrasion;
Osei Bonsu (1900-1977) is regarded as the greatest carver of the Ashanti, who, during his life time, worked for three Asantehene (Supreme chief of the Ashanti). A number of anthropologists, among them Marion Johnson, Eva Meyerowitz (both 1937), William Fagg (1968) and Doran H. Ross (1984), have described and photographed his work. Even Robert S. Rattray, famous for his books about the Ashanti, published carvings of Osei Bonsu in 1927 without making a direct attribution.
Born in Kumasi as a grandson of an Asantehene (Mensah Bonsu 1874‐83), he first worked with his father, a drummer and carver, later as a sculpture teacher in three colonial schools, besides carving for Ashanti nobility. When Prempeh I returned from exile in 1924, he helped with reinstalling the throne regalia and with the reconstruction of the holy Golden Stool. The ascension of Prempeh II to the throne in 1931 enabled him to acquire a number of commissions from the court and later also from that of Opoku Ware II in 1970.
Sojourns in Accra and Cape Coast, where he stayed afterwards, allowed him to also work for other Akan courts, but after independence, when the ill‐famed Kwameh Nkrumah took over, he fell into disgrace and was detained in Usher Fort until 1966.