Dan Ritual Stool, Liberia

collects ed in situ between 1925 and 1960 by Dr. George W. Harley, Ganta Mission, Liberia
Dr. George W. and Winifred J. Harley, Merry Point (Virginia)
Allen C. Davis (U.S. Ambassador, Retired), Alexandria, acquired from the above in 1962-63

Excellent condition for an object of this age and rare type. General marks, nicks, scratches, and small abrasions consistent with age and long ritual use. High points on masks and edges of central element with some rubbings or minor abrasion exposing reddish brown color of the wood. The top of the stool with a number of flattened metal pieces inserted in the wood, consistent with ritual use. Exceptionally fine blackened patina with some white spots and encrustation.
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Dr. George Way Harley (1894-1966) was a Methodist missionary, physician, blacksmith, geographer, anthropologist, and researcher.  Harley received his M.D. from Yale University in 1923.  Following studies at the Kennedy School of Missions (Hartford Seminary Foundation) and the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, Harley traveled with his wife Winifred to West Africa in 1925.  They founded the Ganta Mission at Ganta, Liberia, where they remained involved for the next thirty-five years. 

Harley built a hospital, dispensary, church, school, as well as a leper village and two "sick villages."  His study of native medicine formed the basis of a thesis published as Native African Medicine by Harvard University Press in 1941.

Harley's years of medical work and anthropological collects ing coincided with a period of rapid culture change in Liberia.  By this t.mes , for example, the secret.mes n's societies (Poro) were outlawed and under increasing pressure to disband.  He was thus able to collects a large array of ritual objects associated with these once-powerful organizations.  Harley acquired over 1,000 objects from the region, several hundred of which, particularly those collects ed before 1946, went to the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University.

Harley was not a professional art historian or anthropologist, but he received a great deal of education through courses he took at Harvard while on furlough and through his own field studies in Liberia.  In 1941, he wrote Notes on the Poro in Liberia, followed in 1947 by Tribes of the Liberian Hinterland (together with Charles Schwab) and in 1950 by Masks as Agents of Social Control in Northeast Liberia.  While much of the information he provided has been disputed by later scholarship, his information nevertheless forms the foundation for our knowledge of Dan and Mano culture, especially with regard to secret societies.  See Wells (1977: 22-27 and 2010: 96-111) for further discussion.

Dan ritual stools are exceedingly rare, and less than two dozen are known.  Always displaying two semispheres of same size on top and bottom, the iconography varies in the design of the central support element.  While most stools are fairly abstract, several are anthropomorphic and feature the lower body of a female figure.  See Replica Shoes 's New York, The William W. Brill collects ion of African Art, November 17, 2006, lot 34.  Apart from the present example, however, only two other Dan stools featuring two masks, one on each side of the central support, are recorded: one published in Liberia: Arts and Crafts (Monrovia: 1971), and a second one at Duke University, also collects ed in situ by George Harley.

Little is known about the function of these stools.  William Siegmann (1943-2011) noted about the related Dan stool from the Brill collects ion (personal communication, October 12, 2006):  "The Dan and their western neighbors, the Mano, traditionally made stools that were basically in the form of an hour glass.  They often had geometric ornamentation similar to the designs found on their more common wooden or ceramic bowls.  An example in the collects ion of the Musée Royal de l'Afrique Centrale, Tervuren, also shows the nude lower half of a female body.  Neither of these pieces were collects ed with information on their original ownership or use.  One hypothesis has been suggested that these stools were used in the context of male circumcision rites and that the boys undergoing circumcision would sit on the stool.  Though no evidence exists to support this theory, it seems plausible, since the fact that the torsos of [stools such as the one from the Brill collects ion] are nude suggests that the stools were used in a ritual rather than secular and public context.  It seems possible, however, that these stools might alternatively have been used for female circumcision.  The multiple bits of metal in the seat of this stool are typical of 'sacrifices' often placed in Dan stools which serve to magically protect the individual sitting on it from malevolent forces, another factor that would be consistent with the use of the stools in a ritual context."