H x W x D: 1.4 x 6.1 x 1.4 cm (9/16 x 2 3/8 x 9/16 in.)
Type:
Sculpture
Geography:
Ghana
Côte d'Ivoire
Date:
18th-late 19th century
Label Text:
Although often identified with the Asante, the most numerous and best known of the Akan peoples, weights for measuring gold dust were made and used throughout Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire. For more than five centuries, from about 1400 to 1900, Akan smiths cast weights of immense diversity. Their small size made them portable and easy to trade. Each weight was cast individually in the lost-wax method, resulting in a unique piece, but one that had to be a specific weight to function. Direct casting, a variation in the lost wax casting method, used an actual object rather than a wax model. In this example a grasshopper was transformed into a weight.
The shape or figure of a weight did not correspond to a set unit of measure: a porcupine in one set could equal an antelope in another, or a geometric form in a third. For important transactions, gold dust was placed on one side of a small, handheld balance scale, a weight on the other. Each party to the dealing verified the amount of gold dust using his or her own weights.
Description:
Copper alloy figurative weight in the form of a direct cast of a grasshopper.
Provenance:
Bevill Bressler & Schulman, Newark, New Jersey, -- to 1975
Exhibition History:
Visionary: Viewpoints on Africa's Arts, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., November 4, 2017-ongoing
African Emblems of Status, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., October 29, 1982-April 3, 1983
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