Duende Art Projects

Technique: Ghana 17th - 18th century Copper Alloy PROVENANCE Maître George Loiseau (†1994) Collection, Abidjan, Ivory Coast, before 1960 By descent through the family Galerie Charles-Wesley Hourdé, Paris, France, 2009 Guy van Rijn collection, Brussels, Belgium 2009-2023 EXHIBITIONS “Une collection particulière valant son pesant d’or”, Charles-Wesley Hourdé, Paris, 9 December 2009-31 January 2010 PUBLICATIONS Hourdé (Charles-Wesley), “Une collection particulière valant son pesant d’or”, Paris: Charles-Wesley Hourdé, 2009, #114.

Size: 5 x 0 cm

Authenticity: Certificate provided

Edition: Unique work

Price: € 4.500

Status: for sale

Akan Goldweight Couple

Over six hundred years ago the Akan started to make brass weights for weighing gold dust, the currency of their region of Ghana and the Ivory Coast. Eventually they produced the most complete three dimensional inventory of any culture in history. Virtually every animal, bird, fish, or object known to them became the subject of a miniature sculpture. Human figures are represented in the activities of everyday life and sacred or courtly rituals, together with pioneer casts from nature and a wealth of abstract and ornamental designs. In 2010, the English artist Tom Phillips published a beautiful book on his comprehensive collection of Akan goldweights, which took him thirty years to build up. He writes the following about the depiction of couples: “Relations between men and women are sparsely referred to with the notable exception of the act of copulation, although that itself is rare enough subject in the goldweight repertoire. I have only seen five or six authentic examples of which I own three which were collected by Timothy Garrard. Such a primal event might have generated a thousand utterances of a proverbial kind though none has been recorded. Once the faking of goldweights began in earnest this subject was a natural contender for popularity and many recent portrayals are to be found. (pp. 123-125). The stick-like bodies, asymmetric hairstyles and oversized rounded heads are typical for early goldweights and place this rare example in the eighteenth century or even earlier. In an article on ‘Erotic Akan Goldweights’ (African Arts, Vol. 15, No. 2, Feb. 1982, p. 60) concurs this rarity, stating he has only seen 4 of the type among the circa 120,00 goldweights he estimates to have seen over the years.