Embrace a Wealth of Lantern Figures: From Dragons to Monkeys to Crocodiles

The large illuminated floats (lanterns), that were paraded annually at night in Freetown during the 20th century to mark the end of Ramadan, soon came to incorporate a wide range of imagery using a variety of materials and different building techniques. 

Single animals or groups of animals were still being built as lanterns in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1993 Mighty Spear Lantern Club paraded 'Animal Farm' which comprised a lion, a horse and a giraffe all covered with finely cut strips of paper frills to imitate fur.

In 1997 Mighty Spear Lantern Club built a lantern depicting St George on horseback slaying a dragon. The horse was particularly impressive.

Each lantern was illuminated using bulbs strung around its figures and frame and powered by a small generator beneath the lantern floor. Bulbs were often strategically placed, as in this lion’s mouth, to highlight a special feature or achieve a particular effect.

The mane of this dragon (which was part of Mighty Spear Lantern Club's 1997 lantern) was created using a version of the 'frill' technique, while paper has been cut in the form of scales to cover the dragon's body.

Paper frills, strips and scales were tedious and expensive to produce so figures were often covered with newspaper or brown paper and then painted to give a realistic effect. This leopard was part of a 1993 lantern called 'Revolution' built by Kuntoloh Lantern Club.

Sometimes textiles were used to imitate animal fur as in the case of this camel figure which was covered with a soft velvet-like fabric. It was part of a 1997 lantern depicting 'Antar and the Kafiri' built by Vimto Lantern Club.

These two monkeys were constructed for Montego Bay Lantern Club's proposed lantern in 1991. The builder was an art student and was particularly adept at using papier-mache for making the faces of his puppet figures.

Coloured paper and tissue paper were often used by lantern builders to cover animal figures and to create costumes as in this 1997 lantern. It was inspired by the internationally acclaimed Muppet Show which was a popular TV series in the 1980s and widely watched in Sierra Leone.

Built for Wellington Industrial Lantern Club this lantern depicted a number of animal puppet figures, including a partly painted zebra (without any stripes) playing a keyboard, a dancing dog, a pink rat playing a guitar, a green lizard, a baboon and a pig. 

'Muppet Show' also included a puppet figure representing landa, an important masquerade dancer (‘devil’) of the Poro society among the Kisi and Gbandi people of Sierra Leone. It is always depicted with long, crocodile-like jaws and it introduced a distinctly local, cultural element into this lantern.

A lantern depicting 'Affisatu and the Tortoise' was built in 1997 by Baimbrace-Block Lane Lantern Club. Uniquely, a club member inside the tortoise  inserted his own head and arms into the figure's head and legs in order to operate them in the style of glove puppetry.

This bird-like figure was intended as a hand lantern to be mounted on a stick and paraded alongside Firestone Lantern Club’s lantern in 1991. The parade was cancelled owing to the outbreak of civil war.

Lantern builders (like Mighty Spear Lantern Club's builder of animal figures, Sammah Sesay) tended to specialise in a particular lantern type or technique. Despite rising costs all did their best in the 1990s to produce lanterns worthy of Freetown’s unique tradition.