This is the story of a forgotten treasure. One of these trophies delighted at the end of the 19th century.my century by the troops of French Colonel Alfred Dodds during the capture of Abomey, capital of the kingdom of Dahomey, located in present-day Benin. A piece, therefore, that should have returned to its land of origin in November 2021 with the twenty-six works returned at the time by France to its former colony. Except this object, a real stool called a kataklè, was then… in Helsinki! It has been dormant in the National Museum of Finland for more than eighty years, without anyone paying attention to it.
Kataklè is now the subject of a new chapter in the tumultuous series of restitutions, as recounted in a podcast published on Monday, November 4, by Radio France International (RFI). In four episodes, “The Mystery of 27my Treasure” takes us on the trail of this portable throne, brought out of the shadows thanks to the meticulous research of journalist Pierre Firtion, Finnish curator Pilvi Vainonen and Franco-Beninese art historian Marie-Cécile Zinsou.
“At first I didn’t understand why Emmanuel Macron was talking about returning twenty-six works, because he knew that Dodds had brought twenty-seven pieces to France.recalls the president of the Zinsou foundation, created in Benin and dedicated to contemporary art. But then, where was the one that everyone ignored? » Marie-Cécile Zinsou chooses to silence her questions to “don’t spoil the party.” He is still honest about this with the RFI journalist, whom he met on the day of the return of the royal treasures to Cotonou, the economic capital of Benin.
The tripod stool has resided in Finland since 1939
Then a detective work begins that will take them back in time and travel further than they had imagined. First clue: the twenty-seventh treasure does indeed appear in the online inventories of the Branly Quay Museum, where the royal treasures were displayed before their restitution. It is, therefore, a three-legged wooden seat that served as an enthronement throne for the princes of Abomey. According to his file, he is in “outgoing exchange” with the Kulttuurien museo (“Museum of Cultures”), a department of the National Museum of Finland.
When contacted, a curator at the Finnish establishment, Pilvi Vainonen, said she found no trace of the object. But this anthropologist’s curiosity is awakened. She, in turn, goes out in search of the artifact and ends up finding it in the museum’s reserves. The approximations in the reference to kataklè, both in Paris and in Helsinki, had muddied the waters. However, the tripod stool has been “resident” in Finland since 1939. It arrived there as part of an exchange of objects organized by Boris Vildé, former curator of the Museum of Man, where most of the Quai Branly collections are located.
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