Weight

Akan artist · 17th-early 18th century

Although often identified with Akan peoples living in south-central Ghana, weights for measuring gold dust were used and traded throughout all of present-day Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. For more than five centuries, smiths cast weights from wax models. The form and simple dot decoration identify this weight as dating to the 17th to early 18th century . All weights are immensely diverse in form while set to exact measurement standards.