Knife Handle Cover (1800s): Art, History and Details

Knife Handle Cover (1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Gold sheaths covered the cast iron blade of a king’s ceremonial knife (sikay), wrapping them with symbolism. In Akan states like the Asante Kingdom, gold embodies life force (kra) and is the sun’s earthly counterpart. Only goldsmiths’ guild members could make gold ornaments for the royals and their entourage, or for the royal treasury. Here, the goldsmith used a tool to push the raised floral, leaf, and geometric designs from the back of a soft sheet of gold (repoussé technique). Small dots outlining some motifs were punched into the metal. Similarly decorated gold sheets and solid ornaments capped a knife’s handle.

Object facts

• Title: Knife Handle Cover
• Date: 1800s
• Culture: Africa, West Africa, Ghana, Asante Empire/Kingdom, Kumasi or probably Kumasi, member of the goldsmiths' guild
• Type: Arms and Armor
• Technique: Gold
• Dimensions: Overall: 4.3 cm (1 11/16 in.)
• Collection: African Art
• Department: African Art
• Accession number: 1935.311

A detail from the museum

Only members of the goldsmiths' guild, who claimed descent from the first goldsmith Fusu Kwabi, could make gold ornaments for the royals and their entourage.

Collection credit

Dudley P. Allen Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Wixom, William D. “African Art in the Cleveland Museum of Art.” African Arts 10, no. 3 (April 1977): 16-24.
• Milliken, William. "Exhibition of Gold." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 34, no. 9 (November 1947): 211-212.
• Petridis, Constantijn. South of the Sahara: selected works of African art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2003.

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.