Two hundred and four Ashanti brass goldweights

18TH/19TH CENTURY

Details

Two hundred and four Ashanti brass goldweights
18th/19th century
Cast as a gaming board, an oil lamp, three cartridge belts, a porcupine, two scorpions, a leopard with young, another with a snail, another with an antelope, nine antelopes, four snakes with birds, a snake with an animal, two birds on openwork bases, two each of seven birds on a tree, two birds in traps, another on a perch, another on a geometric panel, two of birds harrassing a beetle, fifteen other birds, two cockerel heads, two terrapin, a seated monkey, a chameleon, four crocodiles, crossed crocodiles, a crocodile with mudfish, four mudfishes, another fish, a pair of sandals, a bundle of tools, a bow and arrow, a double gong/bell, three axes (two without blades), four daggers in scabbards, twelve ceremonial swords, two others with double blades, two pommels of ceremonial swords, four muskets, three pistols, three complete cannon, two cannon barrels, an emplacement of three cannon, two of birds with cannon on their wings, four elephant-tail fly whisks, a circular fan, three lucky knots, a tripod, a lock, two treasure chests, a pipe, fourteen ceremonial horns, seven shields two of which are of openwork form, a jack, a trowel, a pyramid, thirty-three geometrics, twelve of various shapes of which some are fragmentary, eleven others cast from nature such as a small crab, a locust, seeds and nuts; and a head with spiral coiffure cast in a silvery alloy (204)

Provenance

Sir Cecil Armitage (1869-1933), in Ghana 1895-1920
Maurice Cockin

Lot Essay

Sir Cecil Armitage was stationed in Ashanti and Northern Territories, Ghana, as an army officer and subsequently as a Commissioner. He was awarded the D.S.O. for his part in the seige of Kumasi in 1900, an account of which he subsequently published.
In 1933 Maurice Cockin arranged to purchase Armitage's African collection for one hundred pounds from an executor: he was astonished to find a pantechnicon at his gate some days later. Most of it was sold, together with Cockin's own Nigerian collection, to the Museum of Mankind some twenty years ago, but the goldweights, of which the best figurative ones were exchanged for medicines during the war with Mrs. Webster Plass, were divided between the four grandchildren. The present group are sent for sale by a grandson.

This is an ideal opportunity for someone who wishes to acquire weights which were made exclusively for the gold trade, before the brass casters were stimulated to produce them for collectors by R.S Rattray, Eva Meyrowitz and others in the 1920s and thereafter.

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