A collection finding its voice.
Grown over decades, this archive holds 1,401 objects from twelve African countries — from the twelfth-century laterite monoliths of the Nyonyosi to the expressive masks of the Babanki master carvers of the twentieth century.
Our mission
To make African art — and that of West Africa above all — visible in its full breadth: in this we see our task. Where there was water, there was culture. Along the rivers and at the desert's edge, societies took shape over centuries in which wonder at the world grew into a mysticism of its own — and from that mysticism came religious belief, rituals both ordinary and secret, and the associations and secret societies that guarded their knowledge.
The objects in this collection are the material witnesses of that world. Rather than keep them behind glass, we want to make them available to a broad public — as a reliable reference for committed enthusiasts, for specialist editors, and for documentary and film-makers, and as an opportunity for self-education.
Until now, knowledge about these pieces lived in handwritten index cards, in faded black-and-white photographs, and in the collector's memory. With this digital archive we move that knowledge into a searchable, citable form — so that researchers, curators, and future interested parties can place each object in its ethnographic context.
Our approach
For each object we combine four layers of documentation:
- Visual analysis via multimodal AI — with grounded web search used to corroborate attributions where sources allow.
- Terminological correction— misattributed terms (people's language, object names) are fixed against sources.
- Peoples' dossiers from independent deep research — one per people, covering ritual world, aesthetics, and history.
- Contextual enrichment— each object is linked to its people's dossier so that individual piece and tradition refer to one another.
The collector
The collection was assembled over decades by Herbert Stepic, an Austrian business leader and art collector. This archive documents his private holdings of African art.
Status
As of today, 1361 objects carry a complete dossier. The remaining 40 objects are passing through the same process — visible once the analysis is complete.
Contact and corrections
Please send attribution, provenance, or source corrections to office@optimusflow.consulting. We reply personally.
Individual pieces or parts of the collection may be acquired on request — get in touch.