Seth Kane Kwei belonged to a royal clan of the Ga; he lived in the suburb of Teshie, near Accra, the capital of Ghana. In the 1950s, he was an apprentice to a carpenter and sometimes made traditional rectangular coffins, in addition to palanquins used for transporting chiefs. After making a coffin shaped like an airplane for his grandmother, who had always been fascinated by planes but had not flown before her death, Kwei began receiving requests for other representational coffins, each one alluding to the customer's lifelong trade or status. Since Ghana is one of the world's largest cocoa producers, the cocoa pod was a popular form. The coffins are called abebuu adekai (‘boxes with proverbs’). Today, the Kane Kwei Workshop, one of almost a dozen in Ghana specializing in fantasy coffins, is owned by the descendants of Seth Kane Kwei and managed by his grandson, Eric Adjetey Anang.