CategoriesCultural and Religious Styles
Asante Art
Court art of the Asante kingdom of Ghana: gold regalia, kente and adinkra cloth, brass goldweights, carved stools and akua'ba figures.
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About
The Asante kingdom rose in the forests of central Ghana around 1700, when Osei Tutu united several Akan states with Kumasi as capital. Its wealth rested on gold, and its art served a court where regalia, proverbs and display carried political meaning. The Golden Stool, held to contain the spirit of the nation, remains its most sacred object.
Weavers at Bonwire near Kumasi made kente, narrow strips of silk and cotton sewn into cloths whose patterns have names, some once reserved for royalty. Adinkra cloth is stamped with symbols cut from calabash, such as Gye Nyame. Brass casters used the lost-wax method to make thousands of small weights for measuring gold dust, some geometric, others little figures that illustrate sayings; similar proverbs crown the gilded staffs carried by royal spokesmen. Carvers made stools and akua'ba, disc-headed figures carried by women who hoped for a child. British troops took much regalia from Kumasi in 1874.
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