These two 18th/19th century Akan gold weights, each cast from brass, depict shields with handles at their rears. In the words of Tom Phillips, Akan gold weights in the form of shields were one of the earliest figurative subjects to emerge, with its useful capacity for bearing, in martial mode, the insignia of state and chiefdom.
Ex Seward Kennedy Collection, London
L: 34 mm each
Reference
Tom Phillips, African Goldweights: Miniature Sculptures from Ghana 1400-1900 (2010), p. 107
(Click on images to enlarge)
