A love of Africa’s arts and crafts

Barbara Davidson/Los Angeles Times

American Alan Donovan fostered the continent’s crafts for decades. His home in Kenya is a trove of Africa’s aesthetic riches and a mausoleum of its extinct wonders.Alan Donovan, 70, was born in Colorado and attended UCLA but has lived in Africa since the U.S. State Department sent him to Nigeria as a relief officer in 1967. His home, billed as the most photographed on the continent, owes its architectural flourishes to sources ranging from Nigerian mud palaces to Timbuktu mosques. Inside are 6,000 pieces of arts and crafts reflecting a lifetime’s immersion in Africana as a collector, dealer and patron. Every detail is carefully arranged, from the sinks of Moroccan brass to a bathtub of Swahili plasterwork.