Lock (1) - Wood - Lock - Mali
Are you interested in this item?This item is up for auction at Catawiki. Please click on "respond to advert" (orange button) to get redirected to the Catawiki website. Catawiki’s goal is to make special objects universally available. Our weekly auctions feature thousands of unusual, rare, and exceptional objects you won’t find in just any store. Properties of locks:Even if locks can be owned either by men and women, locks often belong to women: several circumstances of attribution have been identified. They may be offered to women by their husbands, at the birth of their first son. According to the tradition, the installation of a lock corresponds to the accession of the wife to a new social status, the one of “adult woman”, namely, the mother of a male child. The installation takes place during the “senkuturu” ceremony in which the three stones of the home, symbolising the three elements (father-mother-child) of the family, are placed in the husband’s concession. Other locks are offered to women by their husbands, as a sign of affection and esteem, when young women settled in the village of their spouse. Another practice consisted in giving a door with its lock to a young girl, at the moment when she leaved the house of her parents, to inhabit the hut built by her husband. These locks are part of the personal property of the woman. Read more