Bozo Puppet Fish: Inside Our New River-Inspired Window

There's a new shoal swimming through our shop window. Carved by hand, painted in indigo, ochre, and bone white, and hung mid-flight against a wash of river blue, our latest window — designed by our brilliant store manager Trudy — turns our storefront into a slice of the Niger River. At its heart are our Bozo puppet fish: sculptures with a story going back generations before they ever reached a shop window in London.

The Bozo Puppet Fish: Carved Stories from the Niger River

Each fish in the window is a Bozo puppet, hand-carved from wood by Bozo artisans in Mali, then painted and antiqued through a traditional underground smoking process that gives the wood its weathered, sun-bleached patina.

The Bozo people call themselves "masters of the river." Settled along the Niger River in central Mali, their entire culture — livelihood, folklore, and art — is built around water and fishing, and it shows in the pieces we carry. What look like decorative sculptures are actually miniature versions of the puppets used in Sogo Bo, a masquerade performance meaning "the animals come forth." Traditionally staged at night after the harvest, Sogo Bo sees young men's associations compete to be the best performers, working the puppets low to the ground in a kind of full-body, belly-crawling puppetry unique to the region. The fish are the stars of the show: a nod to the river that has always fed and shaped the Bozo people, and to the harvest that just closed.

So when you're looking at these fish in our window, you're looking at art with real ceremony behind it — not a generic "tribal fish carving," but a specific, living tradition from one Malian community's relationship with their river.

Setting the Scene: A Window Built Like Water

Trudy's design leans into that river story rather than just displaying the fish on a shelf. The window's backdrop is painted a soft, cloudy blue so the fish read as if they're genuinely suspended mid-swim, caught in a current. Two of the puppets are floating past at different depths, while the rest gather on a rustic wooden table inside, propped up on iron stands as if they've just been pulled from the shallows.

Hanging Amaranthus: Water Weeds Made from Preserved Plants

Above the fish, cascading down from the ceiling, is a curtain of hanging amaranthus — its long, tassel-like green strands doing double duty as both a plant display and a visual stand-in for river reeds or trailing water weed. Amaranthus caudatus, better known by its common name Love-Lies-Bleeding, is usually grown in its deep crimson form, but the green variety we've used here has the same dramatic, rope-like drooping flower spikes, sometimes reaching two feet long, best shown off exactly the way we have — hanging free rather than staked upright.

It's a plant that's meant to spill and drape, so letting it fall in front of the blue backdrop does a lot of the "underwater" storytelling in the window without needing anything else added.

Grounding It All: Indo Stone Planters and Moss

At the base of the display, a cluster of Indo Stone planters — rounded, weathered stone bowls sourced from Indonesia — hold soft cushions of preserved moss. They're doing quiet, important work in this scene: where the fish and the amaranthus bring movement and colour, the stone planters bring weight and stillness, like river stones sitting on a bed. The moss adds a final layer of texture and green that ties the whole display back to something natural and alive, softening what could otherwise feel like a purely sculptural set-up.

Practically speaking, they're also just gorgeous on their own — the kind of piece that looks equally at home holding a fern, an air plant, or nothing but moss, whether in a window display or on a console table at home.

Come and See It for Yourself

Photos capture the colour, but they don't capture the scale of these fish or the way the light moves across that blue backdrop over the course of a day. This is a window (and an in-store display) worth seeing in person, especially if you're drawn to pieces with real history behind them rather than mass-produced decor.

Pop into Botanical Boys to see the full shoal up close, browse the rest of our hand-carved fish and sculptural planters, and talk to our team about the Bozo people, the Sogo Bo tradition, and how a piece like this could work in your own home. And if a particular fish catches your eye, ask us about availability — every piece is hand-carved, so no two are ever quite the same.

Visit us in store to see the full display, or browse our current collection of hand-carved sculptures and planters online.