Ashanti Bronze
horse rider, price: not available
Ashanti
Gold weights information request of availability
Lost Wax Ashanti bronze casting. fine and sensitive.
Ashanti gold weights are also named Abrammo, This is an Ashanti gold
weight, used in the measuring of gold and gold dust, which was mined and panned
in great quantities along the West Coast of Africa, hence the name Gold Coast.
Gold was used in the Ashanti kingdom, now known as Ghana, in trading with
outsiders, making personal adornments, and as an internal currency.
Ashanti weights such as these have a variety of accoutrements such as boxes,
spoons and balances used to hold or measure out gold dust. A full kit would
include boxes, spoons, balance and around forty weights; this was known as a futoo
and carried wrapped together in cloth. The futoo would then be put into a
leather container or wooden box, or if the owner was a wealthy man, a cast-brass
kuduo box. These boxes, full of gold dust, could be buried with their owners and
dug up again if needed, or hidden in times of trouble.
The weight itself is made of brass, which was obtained through trade in
European imports from the late 15th century onwards. Weights were cast using the
lost-wax method which is still the best way of preserving fine modelling and
detail.
How goldweights are made
A goldsmith would make a beeswax model of a weight and cover it with thin
layers of clay, which he brushed over the beeswax with a feather. The clay was
baked, which caused the wax to melt and run out.
The hardened clay could then be used as a mould for bronze: both were encased
in a large aubergine-shaped clay mould with the original miniature clay mould at
the top and the lump of bronze sitting on the bottom. The large clay casing was
then put into the furnace, where the bronze melted. When the bronze was molten,
the smith turned the mould upside down, so the bronze ran into the clay mould
below. The mould was later destroyed to reach the bronze weight.
The earliest known period of weight production began around 1400; during the
18th and 19th centuries weight manufacture increased as the Ashanti’s economy
grew, mainly due to war, conquest and trade.
Sir Garnet Wolseley’s sacking of Kumasi in 1874 had a disastrous effect on
trade and it is unlikely that many weights were made after this date. In 1894,
the colonial administration in the Ashanti region banned the use of gold dust as
currency, and in 1896 outlawed the use and making of weights altogether.
In this way, the Ashanti weights are of extraordinary value in their ability
to tell us not only about the commercial trade of the Ashanti and Akan people,
but also the stories and proverbs of their culture. They serve as a reminder of
the cultures which existed before European contact, and a demonstration of the
drastic change that contact brought about.
I found the information above at the Hunterian you can learn more about
them at the Hunterian
Ashanti gold weights page
other Goldweights I have - bought at Christies South Kensington in the
1970's. Price 650 € each, the arrow-bowl hanger ( last one under right nr 8 )
is not coming from the same provenance and cost 200 € :
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Ashanti
Gold weights information request of availability mention number and URL of
this page
As you can see, three of the weight (nr 1,4 and 5) is in the shape of
the Sankofa bird, the two at the top of a small pyramid backward-looking
to each others birds, are featured in a popular myth reminding the Ashanti
people of the importance of learning from past events; the importance of looking
backwards together to stay together.
Nr 3 in the shape of a chicken is made from two different metals, Aluminum
and Cupper probably.
Most of the Ashanti gold weights are related to proverbs.
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