Hand Coil (1800s): Art, History and Details

Hand Coil (1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

While this looks like a bracelet, it wasn’t worn around a wrist. A chief or titleholder grasped this “hand coil” vertically during the annual Iguẹ festival, during which such men reaffirm their relationship to the Ọba, whose mystical powers are strengthened. An image of a man’s head caps each end of the thick, twisted metal. Repeated human touch rubbed the undecorated lengths bright and shiny. Though small, the coil’s detail is enormous: to capture it, the artist incised the designs in wax during the casting process. They show these men are elites, with necklaces, caps, and whisker-like facial markings.

Object facts

• Title: Hand Coil
• Date: 1800s
• Culture: Nigeria, Benin Kingdom, Ẹdo peoples, members of the Igun Eronmwon (royal brasscasters) guild
• Type: Tools and Equipment
• Technique: Copper alloy
• Dimensions: Diameter: 11.5 cm (4 1/2 in.)
• Collection: African Art
• Department: African Art
• Accession number: 1975.188

A detail from the museum

This is a unique object; it was made using the lost-wax casting technique, which destroys the wax mold in the creation process.

Collection credit

Gift of Katherine C. White

Further reading listed by the museum

• Fagg, William Buller. African Tribal Images;the Katherine White Reswick Collection. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1968, no. 147.
• Digital Benin, Markk Museum Am Rothenbaum Kulturen und Kunste der Welt, (Last Updated: 2021-02-13)

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.