Dogon Door

History

A striking design feature of Dogon architecture is the carved shutters, doors and doorways which portray ancestral figures to protect the people and property inside. They have become A striking design feature of Dogon architecture are the carved shutters, doors and doorways which portray ancestral figures to protect the people and property inside. They have become collector’s specialist items in recent years and authentic ones of some age are fast disappearing into private collections.

Door locks found on granary doors give us a wonderful insight into the abstract and symbolic use of animal and figural imagery. The representational carvings of ancestors serve to keep spirits at bay and offer protection from worldly and unworldly sources of harm.

Dogon buildings are a unique architecture of sculptural mud-built huts, altars, distinctive tapering granaries for each sex, each with a pointed cap of thatch, and meeting houses (Diakite, 1988; Hollyman & van Beek, 2001). The doors for a granary are small and are placed midway up the granary wall. It provided access, throughout the year following harvests, to the goods stored inside (millet, sorghum, rice, corn). The Dogon granaries are narrow, four-sided or round, with a structure made of wood and covered with cob, and generally a thatch roof or a terrace roof.