Goldweight Depicting a Drum

AsanteWW-1800-142588

1800·Copper alloy·2.9 × 1.9 × 2.1 cm (5/16 × 7/8 × 15/16 in.)

<p>Brass-cast weights like this one were produced using the lost-wax technique and used for economic transactions that involved gold. The Akan and Akan-related people traded gold with Islamized merchants from the West African interior and North Africa prior to the arrival of Europeans. Akan artists employed both abstract symbols and figural motifs in these miniature brass castings. It is generally accepted that the designs were intended to communicate a personal or collective meaning. This gold weight is in the shape of a drum and is part of a genre of such objects relating to items of everyday life—furniture, cooking ware, weapons, tools, musical instruments, and accoutrements of leadership.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1800
Medium: Copper alloy
Dimensions: 2.9 × 1.9 × 2.1 cm (5/16 × 7/8 × 15/16 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Asante

Artist

Asante

Asante is both an Ashanti surname and a masculine Ashanti given name. Notable people with the Ashanti name include:

Full artist profile →

More by Asante

View all →

Woman's Wrapper

1925 · Cotton, sixteen narrow woven strips of warp-stripe, warp-faced plain weave, some with bands of weft-faced plain weave and warp-faced plain weave with discontinuous supplementary patterning warps and supplementary brocading wefts; pieced

WW-1925-114428

Kente Wrapper (Nsaduaso)

1925 · Silk, cotton, and rayon, 27 narrow woven strips of plain weave with bands of weft-faced, warp-ribbed plain weave and bands of plain weave with supplementary brocading wefts; joined

WW-1925-114442

Pectoral Disk (Akrafokonmu or Awisiado)

1925 · Gold and red ochre

WW-1925-128376

Adinkra Wrapper

1904 · 6 panels joined of factory-produced cotton, plain weave self-patterned by warp and weft floats; embroidered with silk floss and viscose rayon threads in chain stitches

WW-1904-019222