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

Gold Weight (abrammuo): Geometric (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 was derived primarily from its massive gold resources. Since at least 1600, small weights in brass and bronze were used to weight 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 cateogries: geometric and representational. The latter often refers to proverbs, which used judiciously, marked a wise person.

Object facts

• Title: Gold Weight (abrammuo): Geometric
• Date: 1800s
• Culture: Africa, West Africa, Ghana, Asante goldsmith
• Type: Tools and Equipment
• Technique: Copper alloy
• Collection: African Art
• Department: African Art
• Accession number: 1969.265

A detail from the museum

Geometric weights like this are the earliest form of these small, functional objects.

Collection credit

Gift of Georges D. Rodrigues

Further reading listed by the museum

• Sims, Lowery Stokes. The Persistence of Geometry: Form, Content, and Culture in the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2006.

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.