gold weight

Gold weight made of copper alloy, in a sculptural form depicting three tiers of birds along a pole. The top is surmounted by a sankofa bird, characteristically looking backwards. The sankofa bird is often associated with the proverb 'Is it not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten'.

Brass weights, such as this example, were used to measure gold dust across Islamic West Africa. Gold dust was a form of currency, used predominantly by Akan speaking people from the 14th century to 1900, when the practice was banned by the British Government in Ghana in an attempt to standardize trade using a monetary system. Once they were banned they flooded the European art market, purchased and brought back by European traders. Such weights often tell a story, representing items of prestige, or characters from popular stories or proverbs. This pole of birds is surmounted by a sankofa bird. The sankofa bird is often associated with the proverb 'It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten'. Such weights would have been made by goldsmiths using the ‘lost wax’ technique, where a shape is carved or moulded out of wax before being dipped in several layers of clay slip. Once the slip has dried, molten brass is poured into the mould, replacing the wax by melting it. These weights would often initially have been commissioned by an individual, and then passed down the matrilineal line through inheritance. As trade in gold dust was predominantly an activity reserved for men, an individual would inherit the weights passed down through his mother’s brother. It was said that a person’s soul inhabited the things they used, and thus a collection of inherited weights might be understood to be an assemblage of highly spiritual and personal objects, representing one’s ancestors.

Collection Information

These objects are only a part of our collections, of which there are more than 350,000 objects. This information comes from our collections database. Some of this is incomplete and there may be errors. This part of the website is also still under construction, so there may be some fields repeated or incorrectly formatted information.

The database sometimes uses language taken from historical documents to help research, which may now appear outdated and even offensive. The database also includes information on objects that are considered secret or sacred by some communities.

If you have any further information about objects in our collections or can suggest corrections to our information, please contact us: enquiry@horniman.ac.uk