National Museum of African Art
Spoon
Akan artist · 16th-early 18th century
Until the end of the 19th century, gold dust was used in business transactions by the Asante and related peoples in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire. Special spoons known as saawa, usually made of sheet brass, lifted the gold dust from a storage box and placed it on one side of a beam scale to be measured against a weight.
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