Part of Lord McAlpine’s collection of tribal African folk art to go under the hammer

Selected items from a collection of rare antique colon figures and tribal African folk art belonging to Lord McAlpine of West Green will be sold at Lots Road Auctions on Sunday 13 September 2009.

The collection also includes tribal swords and masks. The colon figures in the auction are between 30 and 100 years old and come mainly from West Africa. Many of the wooden painted figures represent friendly spirits, fertility symbols or show ordinary family life. A particularly charming Ashanti carved wood study of a woman and child has an estimated price at auction of £150 - £300.

Lord McAlpine is a renowned collector and author of a book on collecting and displaying. “These items can be seen as decorative artefacts but they will also be of interest to serious collectors,” he says.

Some of the carvings are of soldiers, local officials and European colonial figures. “Local people considered these carvings, particularly those of European figures, as totems. They would offer the carvings food or cigarettes, believing that in doing so they would absorb some of that person’s power,” recounts Lord McAlpine, who started collecting these particular artefacts in 1995.

Much of the collection in the auction has previously been used to decorate the McAlpine’s holiday villa in Italy which welcomes paying guests throughout the summer. The rooms of their converted 14th century convent of Santa Maria di Costantinopoli in Puglia serve as a stunning backdrop to stylish displays of artefacts from around the world. “Despite the convent’s generous proportions, we always need more space to display new items from my collection,” says Lord McAlpine. “My wife and I like to present our regular visitors with an ever changing décor at the convent, hence the reason for putting these items into auction at Lots Road.”

One of the most valuable items from this collection is a 120cm high carved wood tribal mask from Mali which is decorated with superb colourful geometric detail, and has an estimated auction sale price of £300 - £600. Estimated prices for items at the auction start from £150.

 

 

Lot 387


Lot 387a


Lot 388


Lot 389


Lot 390