JEWELRY FROM SUB SAHARIAN & NORTH AFRICA 01 / Brass Bracelets & Anklets 01.01 Your search result

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Our collection of West African jewellery items has mostly been collected during 1968 to 1970 in the vast region formed by the...read more

Our collection of West African jewellery items has mostly been collected during 1968 to 1970 in the vast region formed by the interior delta of Niger river, Mali, Burkina Faso (Upper Volta at the time), Niger Benin (Dahomey at the time), Togo and Northern Ghana and Ivory Coast. Between 1972 -74 the collection has been completed in Cameroon and Chad.
Most items are made out of brass or bronze. The difference sometimes not very clear, as the composition of the alloys does not respond to actual criteria in metallurgy. Brass is mainly an alloy that consists of copper with varying amounts of zinc or other elements added. These varying mixtures produce a wide range of properties and variation in colour. Increased amounts of zinc provide the material with improved strength and ductility. Brass can range in intensity from red to yellow depending on the amount of zinc added (32% to 39%) to the alloy. Brass, often wrongly qualified as bronze, are easy to cast. Some brass contains also a variable amount of lead. Bronze is an alloy that consists primarily of copper with the addition of other ingredients to produce an alloy much harder than copper alone. Its dull-gold colour characterises bronze, it can be present in its native form or as malachite and malachite. Copper mining in West Africa exists since the second century ( Agadez, Azelik,Akjoujt, Nioro) but significant quantities have later been imported by the early trans-Saharan trade, starting from the XVe Century, the Portuguese maritime trade has traded even more substantial amounts.

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