Gold ring, Asante, Ghana, probably 19th century

Gold ring cast in form of three plain oval plaques with beaded edges, separated by three pairs of billets incised with diagonal lines.

Anglo-Asante War 1874: Asante Gold and Silver Court Regalia

Given by Mr Victor Ames

This gold ring was is of a type worn by the Asantehene (Asante King) in the Royal Court in Kumasi, the Asante capital. It probably comes from the Asante court regalia that was looted in 1874 by British troops during the third of what became known in Britain as the Anglo-Asante Wars of the nineteenth century.

Early European visitors to Asante described dazzling displays of court regalia at the court of the Asantehene (Asante king) in Kumasi, the state capital. The region's natural resources, especially gold, had made the Asante wealthy and court regalia, which included textiles (kente cloth), ivory and gold, reflected high levels of skill and technology. The most revered item in the regalia is the golden stool, which in Asante tradition, descended from heaven during the late seventeenth century, and was received by a priest, Okumfo Onokye, who presented it to the first Asantehene, Osei Tutu I. Possession of the golden stool is vital to the survival of the Asante kingdom and attempts by Britain to obtain the stool during the nineteenth century were strongly resisted. Not even the Asantehene is allowed to sit on the golden stool which contains the memories and spirits of previous Asante kings. A powerfully expressive statue of Okumfo Onokye receiving the golden stool from heaven stands on a major intersection in the town of Adum in Kumasi, near to the site of the old royal palace.

The golden stool is the cultural, spiritual and artistic centrepiece of a dazzling, gold-rich court. In 1817, the English writer and diplomat, Thomas Bowdich, described meeting the Asantehene when he was sent to negotiate a trade treaty from the British administrative centre at Cape Coast Castle to Kumasi, 100 miles inland. 'The sun was reflected, with a glare scarcely more supportable than the heat, from the massy gold ornaments, which glistened in every direction. ... Under the next umbrella is the royal stool, thickly cased in gold. Gold pipes, fans of ostrich wing feathers, captains seated with gold swords, wolves heads and snakes as large as life of the same metal, depending from the handles, girls bearing silver bowls, bodyguards, &c. &c. are mingled together till we come to the King, seated in a chair of ebony and gold.'

Bowdich was shown the traditional Asante methods of lost-wax casting in gold used to produce a ring like this. A very similar technique is still practised today by the descendants of the royal goldsmiths from the time of Bowdich's visit and is championed in Britain by the British-Ghanaian jeweller, Emefa Cole. Here, Bowdich describes the making of a gold ring: 'Bees wax for making the model of the article wanted, is spun out on a smooth block of wood, by the side of a fire, on which stands a pot of water; a flat stick is dipped into this, with which the wax is made of a proper softness; it takes about a quarter of an hour to make enough for a ring. When the model is finished, it is enclosed in a composition of wet clay and charcoal (which being closely pressed around it forms a mould) dried in the sun, and having a small cup of the same materials attached to it (to contain the gold for fusion) communicating with the model by a small perforation. When the whole model is finished, and the gold carefully enclosed in the cup, it is put in a charcoal fire with the cup undermost. When the gold is supposed to be fused, the cup is turned uppermost, that it may run into the place of the melted wax; when cool the clay is broken, and if the article is not perfect it goes through the whole process again. To give the gold its proper colour, they put a layer of finely ground red ochre (which they call Inchuma) all over it, and immerge it in boiling water mixed with the same substance and a little salt; after it has boiled half an hour, it is taken out and thoroughly cleansed from any clay that may adhere to it.'

The ring was a gift to the museum in 1921 from 'Victor Ames', most likely the watercolour artist, Victor Charles Ames. A note in the museum register states it was 'Brought from Venice' where Ames worked. The Ames family was steeped in the military. Victor's father was Lieutenant-Colonel Lionel Ames and maternal grandfather was Colonel Sir John Morillyon Wilson although both had died before 1874. Ames gave an number of items to the museum during the 1910s and 20s including designs for metalwork and iron gates.

This gold ring most likely dates from before 1874. It may well have been one of the items of gold and silver regalia sold at Garrard's in London in April 1874. Garrards were the British Crown Jewellers. They had paid £11,000 for hundreds of items of Asante gold brought back from Kumasi by the British army under the command of Sir Garnet Joseph Wolseley in 1874 and sold on the open market. Although records of the auction were lost during the Second World War, newspaper reports show a British public enthused with a mixture of excitement, curiosity and triumphalism.

On 30 April 1874, 'The Globe' published an article titled, 'Gold Ornaments from the Ashantee' that claimed, 'The show-rooms of Messrs. Garrard, in the Haymarket, have been well filled during the last two days with persons attracted by the collection of curiosities from the Gold Coast exhibited there. Among the lookers on were not a few purchasers and, to judge by the quantity of articles already sold, there will soon be but few left for the virtuosi to pick up ... Among the wrought ornaments, the most conspicuous are two complete masks of gold, the most perfect of which has been purchased by her Majesty.'

The display also engendered a touch of hubris when the skills of the Asante goldsmiths became apparent: 'The most extraordinary fact is that, with one or two exceptions, the whole of these ornaments are cast, and not wrought or hammered. The most elaborate devices - and some of them are extremely elaborate - appear to have been traced wholly on the clay cast, and in very few instances has anything been added to the work when once it has come from the caster's hands. Another remarkable thing is that the cast appears always to have been broken up after being once used, no two of the numerous articles exhibited being found to correspond in design. ... The English jewellers are not above owning that they may take some hints in casting from the Ashantee workmen, some of whose designs are, as they frankly admit, clever enough to baffle their conjectures as to how they were executed. 'Fas est et ab hoste doceri,' ['It is right to learn even from an enemy'] but we hardly expected to gain by our expedition against King Coffee [sic] a lesson in the art of gold-casting.'

On acquisition, the gold ring was recorded as: 'Rong. Gold. West African (?) Ashanti (Ghana) before 1874.'

The seventeen items of Asante gold court regalia in the V&A make up one of the museum's most sharply spotlit collections given the focus of museums around the world on decolonisation and provenance research. They are indelibly linked to British colonial history in West Africa: they were among several hundred items looted from the Asante capital, Kumasi, during the Anglo-Asante wars of the 19th century. Many were later sold at auction and dispersed among museums and private collectors, including the V&A, British Museum, Royal Collection, Wallace Collection and regimental museums.

The museum acquired thirteen of the items at a sale in April 1874 of gold taken by British troops during the raid on and destruction of the royal palace in Kumasi on 4th-6th February. The museum bought two further items of regalia within a decade of the raid, one section of sheet-gold ornament purchased in 1874 from a military family and one cast gold soul-washer's badge purchased in 1883 with no record of the previous owner. A gold ring given to the museum by a collector in 1921 and a gold ornament in the form of an eagle given by a military family in 1936, more than likely come from the regalia.

Soon after the sale in April 1874, the exhibition, 'A Collection of Gold and other objects from Ashanti at the South Kensington Museum' was shown in the North Court of the museum to the great interest of the popular press whose illustrations depict the former Asantehene Kofi Karikari's state umbrella at centre stage. Items from the Asante regalia reached an even bigger audience when they were shown again in 1886 at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition on the site of what is now the Natural History Museum. The exhibition was conceived as a successor to the Great Exhibition of 1851 but whereas that championed industrial competition between European powers, this was more demonstration of the power and reach of the British empire only a few years after Queen Victoria had been crowned Empress of India. It was visited by over five million people in a spirit of artistic curiosity combined with triumphant imperialism.

Of the hundreds of items of gold regalia looted from Kumasi in 1874, the V&A (then the South Kensington Museum) selected pieces that were exemplars of the brilliant goldsmithing techniques practiced for centuries by the Asante royal goldsmiths and displayed them as a sourcebook for British artists and designers seeking inspiration for new work. They were complemented later by electrotype reproductions from other collections that were toured around design schools and art colleges.

Asante Gold Regalia:

The Asante royal regalia is of deep cultural, historical and spiritual significance to the Asante and Ghanaian people. Gold has, since the foundation of the Asante empire during the late 17th century, been central to Asante identity, spirituality and economic stability. Asante kings grew powerful on local gold deposits and the palace in Kumasi became the focal point for a lucrative international gold trade.

The gold regalia is the ultimate symbol of Asante royal government: it decorates the royal throne, is worn by high-ranking court officials and above all, decorates the Asantehene (Asante king) who is adorned with gold ornaments at royal ceremonies. These ornaments carry meaning beyond their material value. They are invested with the spirits of former Asante kings and their decoration can be read by those familiar with the visual lexicon.

The Anglo-Asante War of 1874: the 'Punitive' Raid

The British raid on Kumasi in February 1874 under the command of Major General Sir Garnet Wolseley, aimed to nullify Asante claims to the gold- and former slave-trading port of Elmina. In Ghana, this conflict is known as the Sagrenti War after the local pronunciation of Sir Garnet.

By 1874, Britain and the Asante had long been uneasy trading partners. From the late seventeenth century, European powers, most notably Britain and the Netherlands, began supplying the newly established kingdom of Asante with weapons, metals and luxury goods in exchange for enslaved people, gold and spices. The enslaved people were shipped across the Atlantic to work the plantations and mines whose products were sent back to Europe for conversion to luxury goods as part of the triangular trade. The gold fed European markets for money and luxury goods. Europeans had rarely ventured inland since the Portuguese first built St. George's Castle at Elmina in the 1470s and still today, dotted along the coast are the remains of nearly 100 forts, lookouts and staging posts from where the Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, Swedish and British had traded in enslaved people and natural resources most notably gold and spices.

The parliamentary abolition of the slave trade in Britain in 1807 tightened the focus on gold trading and Britain became increasingly dominant over claims to coastal forts in West Africa as other European powers withdrew their interest. In 1870-71 the Dutch ceded to the British control of the area of coastline around busy port of Elmina giving Britain almost total control over a 300-mile stretch of coastline. Although Elmina was in Fante territory, the Asante had claimed longheld rights to the port and launched an attack against the British garrison in the castle.

In response the British Army sent what was known as a 'punitive expedition' to exact reprisals against the Asante King. 'Punitive' is a term loaded with imperial entitlement. Punitive expeditions were characterised by responses that were often out of proportion to the perceived provocation. Their purpose was twofold: they aimed to remove all possibility of future interference in Britain's imperial and commercial interests overseas by weakening the governments of communities who resisted British encroachment. They also sent a message to other countries around the world, in particular rival European powers, that wherever in the world Britain's interests were challenged, Britain had the power to respond.

From the mid-nineteenth century, an important aspect of the punitive raid was the use of broadcast media. Correspondents and photographers joined traditional war artists in describing events to an eager readership and presenting a narrative based around liberation and progress. The famous writer and explorer, Henry Morton Stanley, accompanied the British expedition to Kumasi and wrote up his accounts for both the New York Herald and the Daily Telegraph. Later in 1874, he published 'Coomassie and Magdala: the Story of Two British Campaigns in Africa' outlining his experiences on the Asante expedition and on another punitive raid from which the South Kensington Museum (now V&A) acquired looted artworks, that of Maqdala, Ethiopia, in 1868.

Under the leadership of Sir Garnet Joseph Wolseley, the British sent three ships to West Africa in late 1873. In early January 1874, they set foot on land about 8 miles east of Elmina near Cape Coast Castle, another former slave-trading fort, later the centre of British administration along the coast. Engineers cut roads, set up telegraph cables and built bridges as a first wave began marching the 100 miles inland towards Kumasi. They reached Kumasi on 4th February. Faced with unfavourable terms and overwhelming odds the Asante king, Kofi Karikari, fled. Wolseley ordered troops to plunder the royal regalia and destroy the town. The gold regalia was not taken simply for its financial value. By removing the regalia from the Asante court, Britain had stripped the Asante rulers of their symbols of government and denied them their authority to govern.

A first-hand account of the raid from a British soldier's perspective is available in the National Art Library (Manuscript 38041022014435) in the form of a 'Diary of the Ashantee War by an Eye Witness from 1873 to 1874, by A/C George Little, 2nd Batt. Rifle Brigade, Gibraltar, 1875'. George Little was a rifleman who witnessed the looting of Kumasi by British troops - although he did not see the gold - and then took part in the burning of the royal palace.

Looting: an Explanation

Looting is another term that needs explaining in a nineteenth-century British military context. Today the term suggests uncontrolled violence and a chaotic free-for-all. During punitive raids the looting took place after the violence and was a carefully-orchestrated, administrative procedure by officials armed with clipboards.

Looting was official War Office and army practice and in Kumasi, Wolseley appointed three 'prize agents' to gather the most valuable materials so that they could be sold. The proceeds went partly towards paying for the expedition. The rich Kente cloths and other items of great value in West Africa were auctioned at Cape Coast Castle. The gold was brought back to London for sale where it would fetch much higher prices. The gold regalia and other pieces were sold at Garrard's in April 1874. A week after the sale, the museum also bought two further items of jewellery and a copper-alloy goldweight from a Serjeant Pearce (Museum. nos 3-5-1875) who either looted them himself without permission or bought them at one of the sales. Modern approaches to objects acquired during conflict mean these items joined the museum's collection in ways that would not be deemed acceptable now.

The raid on Kumasi was one of the key events in the Anglo-Asante Wars of the nineteenth century that culminated in Britain claiming Asante and neighbouring territories in 1901 as The Gold Coast Colony. Ghana, as a country of separate communities linked by a single border, became an independent nation in 1957.

Early European visitors to Asante, West Africa, described dazzling displays of royal regalia at the court of the Asantehene, the ruler of the Asante state. The region's natural gold resources had made the Asante wealthy and court regalia, which included textiles (kente) and gold, reflected high levels of skill and technology. Gold rings made using the 'lost wax' method of casting were worn for personal adornment and to indicate wealth and status. Some were worn by chiefs, others adorned the fingers, thumbs and toes of wealthy men and women. Smaller gold and silver rings were also made to decorate the long bamboo stems of chiefs' tobacco pipes. This example is of a type worn by the Asantehene.

During the so-called Anglo-Asante wars of the nineteenth century, Britain looked to exert increasing dominance over the coastal trading forts along the shoreline of modern day Ghana, West Africa. On 4 February 1874, in a declaration of imperial power following Asante efforts to protect the port of Elmina over which they had a longheld claim, British forces under the command of Major-General Sir Garnet Wolseley launched a 'punitive raid' on the Asante state capital, Kumasi. Faced with overwhelming odds and the impossible demand for an indeminity of 50,000 ounces of gold, the Asante king (Asantehene), Kofi Karikari, fled. To suppress any resurgence of Asante authority, Wolseley ordered troops to plunder the royal regalia and destroy the town. The gold regalia was shipped back to England and sold at Garrard's the Crown Jewellers in London in April 1874 where the V&A bought 13 items. This gold ring was not part of the initial purchase but was given to the Museum in 1921 by the watercolour artist, Victor Ames.

M.256-1921