African beaded jewellery is not just a piece of adornment, it’s so much more than that, as beads are integral to the traditions of many tribes across the continent.
Delve into the fascinating world of African brass jewelry, where history and craftsmanship intertwine. The rhythmic hammering of metal against an anvil, the glow of forges against the African dawn, and the intricate artistry of ancient craftsmen tell a story that spans millennia.
Across diverse communities in Africa, the art of brass working has flourished, leaving a lasting cultural legacy. From the renowned Benin Kingdom in Nigeria to the Dogon people of Mali, numerous communities across Africa have mastered the art of brass working. The skilled craftsmen of the Benin Kingdom were celebrated for their elaborate brass plaques, while the Dogon people created intricate brass jewelry with symbolic motifs.
If you live here, then you probably see African beaded jewellery and beadwork in many different forms when you visit a local market or while encountering different tribes.
But have you ever wondered what these beads symbolize? Beads vary in material (bone, glass, horn, seeds, shells, stones and fossilised materials), their significance, colour, size, and their placement on the body or clothing. All these denote and evoke different meanings in different tribes.
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Next time you buy African inspired jewellery you’ll be well equipped to share the meaning behind the colours.
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The Use of Brass as Currency
Brass has held cultural significance in African communities for centuries. They have also been used as a form of currency. In the Benin Kingdom, brass plaques adorned royal palaces, depicting historical events and honoring ancestors.
Among the Yoruba people, brass crowns and staff symbolized the power and authority of rulers. Trade beads can be dated as far as the 15th century, when European trading ships would travel to West Africa to draw on resources such as gold, ivory, palm oil and slaves.
Manillas[pronunciation?] are a form of commodity money, usually made of brass, bronze, or copper, which were used in West Africa. Originating before the colonial period, perhaps as the result of trade with the Portuguese Empire, manillas continued to serve as money and decorative objects until the late 1940s and are still sometimes used as decoration on arms, legs and around the neck.
The name manilla is said to derive from the Spanish for a 'bracelet' manilla, the Portuguese for 'hand-ring' manilha, or after the Latin manus (hand) or from monilia, plural of monile (necklace).
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The earliest use of manillas was in West Africa. As a means of exchange they originated in Calabar. Calabar was the chief city of the ancient southeast Nigerian coastal kingdom of that name.
Africans of each region had names for each variety of manilla, probably varying locally. They valued them differently, and were very particular about the types they would accept.
A report by the British Consul of Fernando Po in 1856 listed five different patterns of manillas in use in Nigeria. The proliferation of African names is probably due more to regional customs than actual manufacturing specialization.
An important hoard had a group of 72 pieces with similar patination and soil crusting, suggesting common burial. There were 7 Mkporo; 19 Nkobnkob-round foot; 9 Nkobnkob-oval foot; and 37 Popo-square foot.
The lightest 'Nkobnkobs' in the hoard were 108 gm and 114 gm, while they are routinely found (called Onoudu) under 80 gm, this implies that the group was buried at a certain point in the size devolution of the manilla. Mkporo are made of brass.
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The weight correspondence of the oval-foot Nkobnkob with the high end of the round-foot range suggests that it is either the earlier variety, or contemporary with the earliest round-foots. The exclusive presence of the 'square-foot' variety of French Popo, normally scarce among circulation groups of Popos, suggests that this is the earliest variety.
Sometimes distinguished from manillas mainly by their wearability are a large number of regional types called 'Bracelet' monies and 'Legband' monies. Some are fairly uniform in size and weight and served as monies of account like manillas, but others were actually worn as wealth display.
The less well off would mimic the movements of the 'better off' who were so encumbered by the weight of manillas that they moved in a very characteristic way.
Some sources attribute their introduction to the ancient Phoenicians who traded along the west coast of Africa or even early Carthaginian explorers and traders.
The Egyptians have also been suggested as they used penannular money. One suggestion is that Nigerian fishermen brought them up in their nets from the shipwrecks of European wrecks or made them from the copper 'pins' used in wooden sailing ships wrecked in the Bight of Benin.
Metal bracelets and leg bands were the principal 'money' and they were usually worn by women to display their husband's wealth. Early Portuguese traders thus found a preexisting and very convenient willingness to accept unlimited numbers of these 'bracelets', and they are referred to by Duarte Pacheco Pereira who made voyages in the 1490s to buy ivory tusks, slaves, and pepper.
Earliest report on the use of Manillas in Africa points to its origin in Calabar the capital city of the Cross River State of coastal Southeastern Nigeria.
By the early 16th century it was common in the slave trade for bearers to carry manillas to Africa's coast, and gradually manillas became the principal currency of this trade. The Portuguese were soon supplanted aside by the British, French, and Dutch, all of whom had labor-intensive plantations in the West Indies, and later by the Americans.
A typical voyage took manillas and utilitarian brass objects such as pans and basins to Western Africa, where they were exchanged for slaves. Copper was the "red gold" of Africa and had been both mined there and traded across the Sahara by Italian and Arab merchants.
It is not known for certain what the Portuguese or the Dutch manillas looked like. From contemporary records, we know the earliest Portuguese were made in Antwerp for the monarch and possibly other places, and are about 240 millimetres (9.4 in) long, about 13 millimetres (0.51 in) gauge, weighing 600 grams (21 oz) in 1529, though by 1548 the dimensions and weight were reduced to about 250 grams (8.8 oz)-280 grams (9.9 oz).
In many places brass, which is cheaper and easier to cast, was preferred to copper, so the Portuguese introduced smaller, yellow manillas made of copper and lead with traces of zinc and other metals.
In Benin, Royal Art of Africa, by Armand Duchateau, is a massive manilla of 25 centimetres (9.8 in) across and 4.5 centimetres (1.8 in) gauge, crudely cast with scoop-faceted sides, and well worn. It could be the heaviest (no weight given) and earliest manilla known.
Between 1504 and 1507, Portuguese traders imported 287,813 manillas from Portugal into Guinea via the trading station of São Jorge da Mina.
The Portuguese trade increasing over the following decades, with 150,000 manillas a year being exported to the like of their trading fort at Elmina, on the Gold Coast, between 1519 and 1522, and an order for 1.4 million manillas being placed, in 1548, with a German merchant of the Fugger family, to support the trade.
As the Dutch came to dominate the Africa trade, they are likely to have switched manufacture from Antwerp to Amsterdam, continuing the "brass" manillas, although, as stated, we have as yet no way to positively identify Dutch manillas.
Trader and traveler accounts are both plentiful and specific as to names and relative values, but no drawings or detailed descriptions seem to have survived which could link these accounts to specific manilla types found today.
Early in the 18th century, Bristol, with companies such as R. & W. King (one of the companies later incorporated into the United African Company), and then Birmingham, became the most significant European brass manufacturing city. It is likely that most types of brass manillas were made there, including the "middle period" Nkobnkob-Onoudu whose weight apparently decreased over time, and the still lighter "late period" types such as Okpoho (from the Efik word for brass) and those salvaged from the Duoro wreck of 1843.
Among the late period types, specimen weights overlap type distinctions suggesting contemporary manufacture rather than a progression of types. A class of heavier, more elongated pieces, probably produced in Africa, are often labelled by collectors as "King" or "Queen" manillas.
Usually with flared ends and more often copper than brass, they show a wide range of faceting and design patterns. Plainer types were apparently bullion monies, but the fancier ones were owned by royalty and used as bride price and in a pre-funeral "dying ceremony." Unlike the smaller money-manillas, their range was not confined to west Africa.
A distinctive brass type with four flat facets and slightly bulging square ends, ranging from about 50 ounces (1,400 g)-150 ounces (4,300 g), was produced by the Jonga of Zaire and called 'Onganda', or 'onglese', phonetic French for "English.".
The Native Currency Proclamation of 1902 in Nigeria prohibited the import of manillas except with the permission of the High Commissioner. This was done to encourage the use of coined money.
They were still in regular use however and constituted an administrative problem in the late 1940s. The British undertook a major recall dubbed "operation manilla" in 1948 to replace them with British West African currency.
The campaign was largely successful and over 32 million pieces were bought up and resold as scrap. The manilla, a lingering reminder of the slave trade, ceased to be legal tender in British West Africa on April 1, 1949 after a six-month period of withdrawal.
People were permitted to keep a maximum of 200 for ceremonies such as marriages and burials. Only Okpoho, Okombo and abi were officially recognised and they were 'bought in' at 3d., 1d. and a halfpenny respectively. 32.5 million Okpoho, 250,000 okombo, and 50,000 abi were handed in and exchanged.
Internally, manillas were the first true general-purpose currency known in West Africa, being used for ordinary market purchases, bride price, payment of fines, compensation of diviners, and for the needs of the next world, as burial money. Cowrie shells, valued at a small fraction of a manilla, were used for small purchases.
In regions outside coastal west Africa and the Niger River a variety of other currencies, such as bracelets of more complex native design, iron units often derived from tools, copper rods, themselves often bent into bracelets, and the well-known Handa (Katanga cross) all served as special-purpose monies.
As the slave trade wound down in the 19th century so did manilla production, which was already becoming unprofitable. By the 1890s their use in the export economy centered around the palm-oil trade.
Many manillas were melted down by African craftsmen to produce artworks.
Manillas were often hung over a grave to show the wealth of the deceased and in the Degema area of Benin some women still wear large manillas around their necks at funerals, which are later laid on the family shrine.
| Manilla Type | Composition | Weight | Use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mkporo | Brass | Variable | Currency |
| Nkobnkob (Round Foot) | Brass | 108-114 gm (in hoard) | Currency |
| Nkobnkob (Oval Foot) | Brass | Variable | Currency |
| Popo (Square Foot) | Variable | Variable | Currency |
| King/Queen Manillas | Copper/Brass | Heavier, Elongated | Bride Price, Royal Use |
Brass Jewelry in East Africa
The ancient metallurgical and jewelry-making traditions of East Africa represent far more than historical curiosities they constitute a living heritage that continues to influence contemporary African art, design, and cultural expression.
Africa's relationship with metalworking extends back to the 5th millennium BCE, making it one of the earliest centers of metallurgical innovation in the world. The emergence of metallurgy in East Africa wasn't merely technological it was transformational. The ability to work metals marked a fundamental shift in how societies organized themselves, traded with distant partners, and expressed their cultural values.
Brass working occupied a special place in East African metallurgy, representing both technical mastery and cultural sophistication.
East African metalsmiths developed distinctive techniques for working brass that set their craftsmanship apart. The lost-wax casting method, known locally by various names across different ethnic groups, allowed artisans to create intricate, detailed pieces that would be impossible to achieve through hammering alone.
The forging techniques were equally sophisticated. Master smiths would heat brass ingots in charcoal furnaces that could reach temperatures exceeding 1,000 degrees Celsius, then shape the metal through careful hammering, drawing, and twisting.
While brass captured much attention for its versatility and beauty, East African jewelers worked with a remarkable array of materials that reflected both local resources and far-reaching trade connections. Silver, often acquired through trade with North African and Middle Eastern merchants, was crafted into delicate filigree work that demonstrated the finest levels of technical skill.
The integration of organic materials showcased the holistic approach East African jewelers took to their craft. Ivory from elephants, amber from ancient resin deposits, and shells from both inland lakes and the Indian Ocean were incorporated into metal settings to create pieces that told stories of trade, travel, and cultural exchange.
