Goldweight Depicting a Drum

Brass-cast weights like this one were produced using the lost-wax technique and used for economic transactions that involved gold. The Akan and Akan-related people traded gold with Islamized merchants from the West African interior and North Africa prior to the arrival of Europeans. Akan artists employed both abstract symbols and figural motifs in these miniature brass castings. It is generally accepted that the designs were intended to communicate a personal or collective meaning. This gold weight is in the shape of a drum and is part of a genre of such objects relating to items of everyday life—furniture, cooking ware, weapons, tools, musical instruments, and accoutrements of leadership.