Kane Kwei Carpentry Workshop

The Kane Kwei Carpentry Workshop is a studio established in Teshie, Ghana, since the 1950s. It is known for its design coffins that became symbolic of African artistic creativity.

Seth Kane Kwei (1922–1992) was a Ga carpenter joiner established in Teshie, in the suburbs of Accra in Ghana. He was a long time considered to be the inventor in the early 1950s of design coffins or fantasy coffins, called Abebuu adekai ("boxes with proverbs") by the Ga people, the dominant ethnic group of the region of Accra. Though, an anthropologist recently published a different story of the origin of the coffins.

As the anthropologist Regula Tschumi recently wrote, the figurative coffins developed out of the figurative palanquins which were formerly used like the figurative coffins in Accra only by the traditional chiefs. Around 1960 the use of figurative coffins for Ga burial rites became widespread. Design coffins are acknowledged as symbolic of contemporary creation in Africa.

At the death of Kane Kwei, his son Sowah took over the workshop, then Cedi - Kane Kwei's younger child - after the death of Sowah in 1999. Since 2005, Eric Adjetey Anang (born 1985, the son of Cedi) has been attempting to revitalize the creativity of the studio by the introduction of new models, the creation of furniture realized in the same spirit and using the same techniques as for the coffins.

About ten carpenters' workshops established in Teshie and in the region of Accra produce similar coffins. Some of their masters are like Paa Joe and Tei in Dorwanya former apprentices of Seth Kane Kwei. Others were trained by Kane Kwei's successors, mainly by Paa Joe. Among them are Daniel Mensah called Hello in Teshie, Tetteh in Amasaman and Tetteh Red in Ningo, Kudjoe Affutu in Awutu, Central Region, and Eric Kpakpo in La.

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