Ours is a family business

Started by Yuri and Ilya Raskin, a farther and son team. We have been collecting and selling high quality African art for more than 30 years. Our large private collection allows us to spend time with this relatively small and exclusive online business that is a labor of love for our family. We concentrate only on the high quality art and spend a lot of time selecting the authentic, unique and rare pieces from the best sources in Africa and from the private collections. We give preference to the artifacts with high artistic quality and stylistic authenticity. Throughout the years we have developed excellent and trusted contacts, which locate and retrieve the best African art without getting middlemen involved. This together with the strictly online nature of our operation keeps the prices well below the competition.

Our mission, to a large part, is to enhance public appreciation of the beauty and value of African art. We mainly sell to collectors in the US and abroad who trust us and keep coming back for more, year after year. Outside African art collecting, Ilya is a Professor at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and a Chairman of a Biotechnology company, Nutrasorb, Inc.

Ilya's wife Vera (a historian by training and a marketing professional in corporate and non-profit sectors) runs the business full time with the help of daughter Sasha Raskin - a masters prepared Anthropologist. Yuri's widow Natalia is in charge of packaging and shipping.

Vera Raskin's bio:

I married into collectors' family. My father-in-law started his African Art collection in the mid 1970'ies. My mother-in-law was passionate about her family antique business. And for the first 10 years of my married life I argued with my husband over every piece of African art he brought home…until one day it dawned on me that he was not just "decorating" our house, but rather – he was building our AFRICAN ART COLLECTION. My husband and my father-in-law collaborated and often competed in their collecting.

As a professional marketing researcher and as a historian I know the allure of the infinite field of African Tribal Art. As a certified life coach I am rewarded by e-mails and phone conversations with my clients from all over the world. They contact me about all aspects of tribal art – from tribal identification to assistance with selection of pieces for stage decorations, art installations, home décor, and rounding out their collections.

I even coach my clients in how to walk a fine line between heeding their passion for collecting African art and maintaining peace with their spouses. I know the magic for bringing balance and harmony into collectors' lives!

AND being bilingual – I love every accent I hear at the other end of the phone line – be it Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Australian, Texan or that unmistakable New York brogue.

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A book about private collections was just published in Russia with a chapter on the Raskin collection. Vera Raskin wrote this chapter with the story of the collection and arttribal.com and many pictures of African  masks.

Pieces from our collection are frequently displayed in shows and exhibits. We have also displayed some of our Raskin Family African Art Collection at Alfa Gallery.