Pendant: Face (1900s): Art, History and Details

Pendant: Face (1900s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Cast using the lost-wax method, gold objects are the only Baule art forms associated with ancestral spirits. Usually stored in suitcases or pots, a collection of gold adornments (aja) are displayed on important occasions such as funerals. They are laid out around the corpse before burial as a sign of respect and their family's wealth. Faces such as this pendant are said to be idealized portraits of friends or lovers. This depiction of a man has a beard and elaborately styled hair.

Object facts

• Title: Pendant: Face
• Date: 1900s
• Culture: Africa, West Africa, Côte d'Ivoire, possibly Baule-style goldsmith
• Type: Jewelry
• Technique: Gold
• Dimensions: Overall: 7.6 x 5 cm (3 x 1 15/16 in.)
• Collection: African Art
• Department: African Art
• Accession number: 1954.602

A detail from the museum

The raised texture seen on the forehead are remains of the gating technique used to introduce molten metal into the mold during lost-wax casting and indicate that the surface was not highly finished after casting.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Chauvet, Stephen. "Objets d'or, de bronze et d'ivoire dans l'art nègre." Cahiers d'Art 5 (1930): 33-40, fig.15.
• Drewal, Henry John. African Art: A Brief Guide to the Collection. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1989, fig.23.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.

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.