Baule vintage geometric brass goldweight - Ivory Coast
This authentic, vintage, old, used brass gold weight was made to be part of the process of weighing gold dust which was, over 100 years ago, the most important currency over most of the African continent.
This gold weight was made by the ancient traditional lost wax casting process where the object is first shaped of bees wax then covered with a sand & clay investment. This unit is dried and then baked so the investment hardens and the wax runs out leaving the space into which the molten brass is poured. Once cooled the investment is removed, broken off, never able to be used again, to yield the object so cast. Every single object of this type, no matter how small, is made this same way, one by one, by hand. As a result of this handmade process each pendant is unique although the design of all is very similar; each pendant has small differences.
1 3/8 x 1 1/8″ (3.5 x 2.9 cm)