Architectural Pillars & Posts

An Ethiopian round house, night. The Gurage post stands guard at the center, between the people and the animals, and between the household and the spirits.

Antique pillars and posts come from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Gurage kata, or sleepwalker posts, formed that protective enclosure. Yoruba veranda posts with carved figures held up palace roofs in Nigeria. Nupe, Igbo and Dogon posts, Bongo grave posts from Sudan and Naga house posts from northeast India carry ancestors, horns and phallic forms of protection and fertility. Toraja lumbung or rice-house panels from Sulawesi and posts from Japan join Indian teak, sandstone and marble pilasters and Moroccan cedar.

Many date from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the wood split and silvered by weather. One standing alone in a stairwell, or a pair flanking a doorway, gives a room an architectural spine.

Stands on its own. Always has.