Dogon Wood Granary Door, On custom base

Behind the door, the grain. Behind the grain, the family’s winter. Dogon granary doors in Mali guarded the stores and valuables a household depended on.

Such doors were commonly carved with rows of figures, often understood as ancestors watching over the contents. This early 20th-century example is made of two wooden planks joined by crossed steel staples. Four standing figures are carved in relief across its face, each with a stacked, knobbed head, a long oval body with a central ridge, and short legs. The wood is deeply weathered to a crusty gray-brown, with cracks along the grain and holes from old fittings. Seventeen and a half inches tall, on a custom steel stand that lets it pivot.

Four watchmen. None of them blink.