Abebuu Adekai: Ghana's Fantasy Coffins and the Ga Art of Celebrating Death

Long before the first fantasy coffin was carved, the Ga people of the Greater Accra Region had developed one of West Africa's most elaborate funeral cultures. For the Ga, death is not an ending but a transition — the deceased joins the ancestors and continues to influence the living. Funerals are accordingly celebrations: multi-day events involving feasting, drumming, dancing, and the conspicuous display of wealth and social standing.

The roots of figurative coffins lie in the Ga tradition of elaborate palanquins — ornamental sedan chairs used to carry chiefs during festivals and processions. These palanquins, often carved in the shapes of animals (eagles, lions, elephants), symbolised the chief's power, clan affiliation, and spiritual authority. When a chief died, his palanquin sometimes served as his coffin or was buried alongside him.

Ga cosmology holds that the afterlife mirrors the living world: the dead need provisions, tools, and symbols of their earthly identity. A fisherman might be buried with his nets; a trader with cowrie shells. The figurative coffin, when it emerged in the 1950s, was not a radical break with tradition but an elaboration of existing Ga ideas about death, identity, and continuity.

The Greater Accra coastal towns of Teshie, Nungua, La, and Osu — traditional Ga settlements that predate colonial Accra — were the cradle of this culture. Teshie, with its concentration of skilled carpenters who built fishing canoes, provided the artisan base from which fantasy coffin-making would emerge.