Among the Asante and other Akan peoples, stools play an important role in each person’s life milestones. When children learn to crawl, they receive stools as their first gift from their father. For young women, puberty rites entail sitting on their stools. A husband presents his wife with a stool when they marry. A deceased person is bathed on a stool before burial.

Regalia distinguishes Asante royals and indicates the positions held by royal attendants. Items of regalia frequently incorporate gold as a display of royal power. Not only do these accessories dazzle the beholder, they also visualize Asante proverbs about leadership and society.

By the 17th century, Akan and Asante goldsmiths cast goldweights in the forms of humans, animals, plants, and various man-made objects. Like some of the earlier geometric weights, representational goldweights were connected to proverbs and maxims. For older figurative weights, many of their original associations have been forgotten. Others have new meanings, as familiar proverbs differed among generations and geographic locations.

The Akan learned the technique of brass casting from their North African trading partners, enabling them to create figurative goldweights. Brass, a combination of copper and zinc, is easier to melt and cast than gold. Akan and Asante metalsmiths used two methods of casting, which involves pouring molten metal into a mold and allowing it to cool.

Goldweights are counterweights used for measuring amounts of gold dust with a balance scale. They were made to match the weight standards of Akan trading partners. The shapes of goldweights evolved from geometric to figurative. The earliest goldweights were made of stone, copper, iron, or basalt. As the trans-Saharan trade routes became more established, the Akan learned the technique of brass casting from their North African trading partners, which allowed them to create figurative goldweights.

Vast quantities of gold beneath the soil provided the basis for the Asante’s wealth. Centuries before the Kingdom of Asante (established c. 1701), numerous subgroups of Akan peoples mined gold in the forests and panned for gold in local waterways. From 1400 to 1900, gold dust and small gold nuggets served as currency throughout the region.

Robert Low Brandon Kirby (1852–after 1918), was an Assistant Inspector with the Gold Coast Constabulary from 1881 to 1885. Amid tense relations between the Asante kingdom and the British Empire, Brandon Kirby completed two missions to the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana). It was during the second of these visits that he obtained photographs of his trip and two examples of Asante gold regalia.

A subgroup of the Akan peoples, the Asante are Twi-speaking matrilineal peoples primarily located in south-central Ghana. From the founding of the Asante kingdom at the start of the 18th century, the Asante constituted the most numerous and prominent of the Akan. Vast quantities of gold and bedazzling royal regalia established the kingdom’s reputation.

Dale Chihuly is widely renowned for 

This pair of Japanese ornamental screens illustrates one of the best-known works of literature in Japanese history, The Tale of Genji, about the adventures, romantic and otherwise, of Prince Genji.