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Goldweight with a Geometric Design
Asante (Ghana; Coastal West Africa)
18th/19th century
- Medium
- Copper alloy
- Classification
- Decorative Arts
- Dimensions
- 2 × 2 × 0.7 cm (3/4 × 3/4 × 1/4 in.)
- Culture
- Ghana
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of Africa
- Credit line
- Gift of the Britt Family Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
This small, square gold weight consists of a pattern of four concentric semicircles on its face. It is probable that this weight was made sometime in the 18th or 19th centuries in light of its ornate “wax-thread” design, which was common during that period. Brass and copper weights were used for five centuries—between about 1400 and 1900—as a means to weigh gold mined by the Akan and traded first westward and then across the Sahara to North Africa, and later with the Portuguese and Dutch.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
