Gold Weight (abrammuo): Antelope (1800s): Art, History and Details

Gold Weight (abrammuo): Antelope (1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The wealth and power of the Asante kingdom were derived primarily from its massive gold resources. Since at least 1600, small weights in brass and bronze were used to weigh gold dust and nuggets. The royal court had the most elaborate store of weights, while commoners often had about a dozen. Their imagery falls into two broad categories: geometric and representational. The latter often refers to proverbs, which used judiciously, mark a wise person. The weight in the form of an antelope with enormous horns may refer to the proverb "had I known"—a visual pun between the length of the horns and the idea of hindsight as perfect vision.

Object facts

• Title: Gold Weight (abrammuo): Antelope
• Date: 1800s
• Culture: Africa, West Africa, Ghana, Akan-style artist
• Type: Tools and Equipment
• Technique: Copper alloy
• Dimensions: Overall: 5.2 cm (2 1/16 in.)
• Collection: African Art
• Department: African Art
• Accession number: 1935.306

A detail from the museum

To make this casting, a brass caster first modeled the shape in wax.

Collection credit

James Albert Ford Memorial Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.), and James Johnson Sweeney. African Negro Art. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1935.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.