Big ancient Ashanti doll

This remarkable 37 cm Ashanti Akuaba fertility doll continues the lineage of iconic Akan sculptural forms exhibited in your collection. Its elegant silhouette—disc-shaped head, ringed neck, and minimalist limbs—echoes traditional ideals of beauty, health, and fertility. The dark, even patina suggests careful handling and age, enhancing its presence as a ritual object and sculptural work.

Women traditionally carried such dolls on their backs, caring for them as children in the hope of conceiving and bearing healthy offspring. Beyond their ritual role, these figures are admired for their striking abstraction and sculptural harmony, which influenced 20th-century Western artists.

This piece relates directly to your 30 cm Akuaba fertility doll illustrated in the existing listing here: Akuaba Fertility Doll – Asante, Ghana. (See that page for legend, typology, and museum reference.) You may also wish to refer to your blog post A Personal Reflection on My Mother’s African Art Collection for the background story and how these works embody the collector’s legacy.

This piece, preserved in the family collection for decades, shows fine age and handling patina, attesting to its authenticity and ritual use.

As a larger counterpart to the 30 cm example, this doll adds both scale and depth to your collection, offering visitors and buyers a richer perspective on the variation and potency of the Akuaba form.