Blast from the Past: Ring from the Kingdom of Asante - Article

  -  by Edessa  |   26 Jan 2012   |   Culture & News

Jewelry making is one of the oldest crafts in the world and forms of decorative art. There are more than 7000 years worth of jewelry history spanning from great empires, royal families, and jewelry found from all over the world. I've decided it would be fun to post snippets about jewelry pieces from the past. First stop, the Kingdom of Asante.

Asante Finger Ring

Between the 1700s-1900s in West Africa, the Kingdom of Asante raised as one of the most successful imperial powers in West Africa. This kingdom was found on the large amounts of gold resources found in that region. The sole currency used in this kingdom was gold dust. Everything encompassing the Asante kingdom was in relation to the gold found. The king and major chiefs, plus certain senior officials wore gold jewels and gold decorative insignia. It was a way of distinguishing the different rankings among people.

Since the sole currency was gold dust, the king was the only official that could give permission to turn the gold dust into regalia or jewelry. As a goldsmith in the kingdom, you were required to be inventive and produce a continuous flow of unique and new styles for the wearer. The method of making the jewelry was lost-wax casting. Lost-wax casting makes an impression of a metal jewelry model in a rubber mold. The rubber mold is repeatedly injected with molten wax which hardens into exact copies of a jewelry item. Molten metals are injected into the cavities and allowed to cool. This type of method can make one of a kind pieces or multiple pieces. Today, many hand crafted wedding rings are created with lost-wax casting.

Some of the jewelry designs were taken from Europeans, but most designs were verbal representations. For example, the finger rings and toe rings were usually designed to illustrate proverbs and adages. The pictured finger ring is a sample of the jewelry made in the Asante Kingdom. There are three cannons on the top of the ring. On the side of the ring, there are hand carved leaf-like designs