As Africa is rich in natural metals, it has a long and rich tradition of metalwork and metal items were historically a source of wealth, status, currency, and the basis for trade, As summarized on the University of Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum website, “There is enormous variety in African metalworking, in terms of the metals used, the techniques employed, and the objects produced. Historically, the metals used most in Sub-Saharan Africa were iron, copper, bronze (alloy of copper and tin), brass (alloy of copper and zinc), and gold. Metal has been used to produce objects for almost all areas of life, including trade, warfare, agriculture, worship, ritual, and body ornamentation. In West Africa from the fourteenth century, copper bracelets were used as currency. After the arrival of Portuguese and other European traders, great numbers of these manillas (the Portuguese word for bracelet) were produced in Europe to trade in west Africa (as part of the slave trade) …. a copper manilla made in Birmingham for trade to Africa…. was produced to be exchanged with Igbo people in Nigeria for palm oil and ivory…The copper from these manillas brought to Africa from Europe was often melted down and remade into other metal objects.” In Ethiopia coin silver was melted to make Ethiopian crosses. African metalware objects on the VA site include a Congo iron gong, manillas, and Ethiopian Crosses made from coin-silver.
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The Fulani are the most numerous nomadic people on earth and one of the largest ethnic groups in West Africa. Mostly Muslim, they are primarily nomads and sedentary farmers. For centuries they created African metalwork and jewelry like arm and ankle bracelets as symbols of wealth and status, fashion adornments and for birth, coming of…
The Fulani are the most numerous nomadic people on earth and one of the largest ethnic groups in West Africa. Mostly Muslim, they are primarily nomads and sedentary farmers. They created metalwork African jewelry as arm and ankle bracelets for centuries that were symbols of wealth and status, fashion adornments, used ceremonially for births, coming…
The Fulani are the most numerous nomadic people on earth and one of the largest ethnic groups in West Africa. Mostly Muslim, they are primarily nomads and sedentary farmers. For centuries they created African metalwork and jewelry in the form of arm and ankle bracelets as symbols of wealth and status, fashion adornments worn for…
The Fulani are the most numerous nomadic people on earth and one of the largest ethnic groups in West Africa. Mostly Muslim, they are primarily nomads and sedentary farmers. For centuries theyc reated African metalwork and jewelry in the form of arm and ankle bracelets as symbols of wealth and status, fashion adornments and for…
The Fulani are the most numerous nomadic people on earth and one of the largest ethnic groups in West-Africa. Mostly Muslim and primarily nomads and sedentary farmers, for centuries they created African metalwork and jewelry in the form of arm and ankle bracelets. They were symbols of wealth and status, fashion adornments for birth, coming…
The Senufo, numbering between 1.5 and 2.7 million people in West Africa, are primarily agricultural. They live in mud-brick farm houses in large villages and are renown as remarkable musicians, creators of wood figures, masks and metalwork tribal-art. For centuries, they like many groups created arm and ankle bracelets as symbols of wealth and status…
The Senufo of Mali number between 1.5 and 2.7 million people in West Africa and are primarily agricultural. They are renown as remarkable musicians and carvers of wood figures and masks. For centuries the Senufu created metalwork arm and ankle bracelets that were symbols of wealth and status, fashion adornments used ceremonially for births, coming…
For centuries, the Tuareg were nomadic tribal people who traversed the Sahel region and Saharan Africa Desert. Like most African peoples, they created arm and ankle bracelets to serve as symbols of wealth, status, wearable adornments, for ceremonies of births, coming of age, marriages and burials, trade for animals and agricultural goods and as a…
Historically nomadic tribal people who traversed the Sahel region and Saharan-Africa, the Tuareg in Mali and Niger, like many African peoples, created arm and ankle bracelets that were easy to transport and had many uses: wealth and status symbol, fashion adornments, for ceremonial use for births, coming of age, marriages, and burials, to trade for…
Two million Tuareg traditional herders were historically nomadic tribal peoples who traversed the Sahel region and the Sahara Desert in an area the size of Western Europe in the North African countries of Mali, Niger, Libya, Algeria, Chad and West African Burkina Faso. As followers of Islam, they are prohibited from creating figures or masks…
Tuareg traditional herders were nomadic tribal peoples who traversed an area the size of Western Europe in the Sahel region and the Sahara Desert and in the North African countries of Mali, Niger, Libya, Algeria, Chad and West African Burkina Faso. Followers of Islam, they are prohibited from creating figures or masks and use their…
No other region has produced the quantity, quality, and diversity as the crosses from the Africa Ethiopian-Highlands, the second nation to adopt Christianity as its official religion. Ethiopian pendant crosses were made in a variety of sizes, designs, styles, and ornamentation which are metaphors for the religious beliefs, ideology, and practices of the Ethiopian Church…
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