Legends, Sorcerers, and Enchanted Lizards: Door Locks of the Bamana of Mali
  • 2001/192 pages
  • Distributed for Holmes & Meier Publishers
    Includes photographs

Legends, Sorcerers, and Enchanted Lizards:

Door Locks of the Bamana of Mali

Pascal James Imperato, with an foreword by Robert J. Koenig
Paperback: $30.00
ISBN: 9780841914148
The Bamana people are known for their rich artistic traditions, including the creation of masks, statues, door locks, headdresses, and ritual and utilitarian objects: Their door locks are among the most remarkable of all African art. Sculpted of wood in a rich variety of forms, they depict mythological and historical figures, social events, and representational figures—crocodiles, lizards, tortoises, owls, bats, butterflies, humans.

Known as konbarabara, these exquisite locks were once presented to young women at the time of their marriage and affixed to the doors of their new homes. The beauty of the carvings and the ingenuity of the locking systems present a fascinating study of this unusual art form.

This unique publication presents for the first time in the United States a comprehensive survey of Bamana lock forms: Fifty-three Bamana locks and four Bamana doors with locks are displayed along with ten Dogon and two Bwa locks (both ethnic groups live in Mali).

Pascal James Imperato is Dean and Distinguished Service Professor at the SUNY Downstate Medical Center School of Public Health. He is author of Dogon Cliff Dwellers: The Art of Mali's Mountain People, d Buffoons, Queens and Wooden Horsemen: The Dyo and Gouan Socities of the Bambara of Mali, and The Historical Dictionary of Mali.