An Akan Kuduo vessel

An Akan Kuduo vessel, in shape of a hen, Ghana, Koumasi region, with the lid of a human head, very beautiful, fine engraving work featuring geometric patterns and good condition.

Akan kuduo are cast copper-alloy vessels produced by Akan-speaking peoples of southern Ghana and southeastern Côte d’Ivoire, probably from the fifteenth to the early twentieth century. They belong to a wider corpus of Akan metalwork executed by adwumfoɔ (goldsmiths and casters) using the lost-wax (cire perdue) process. The vessels are usually cylindrical or spherical in form, fitted with lids and handles, and often feature elaborately cast reliefs, figurative motifs, or symbolic ornament.

Functionally, kuduo served as personal and ritual containers for gold dust, beads, jewelry, or other valuables. They also had ceremonial significance: during life they represented the wealth and status of their owners—chiefs, priests, and other elites—and after death they were sometimes placed in shrines or tombs as receptacles for the soul’s property (kra sika). Some were kept in royal treasuries and used in libation or purification rites.

Stylistic and technical evidence suggests that the oldest known kuduo may date to the fifteenth or sixteenth century, corresponding with the early Akan gold trade and the establishment of Bono-Manso and Begho as major centres of metallurgical production. Later examples, continuing into the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, exhibit heavier ornamentation and a greater variety of figural motifs. Radiocarbon dating is not applicable to the metal itself, but archaeological contexts and comparisons with dated regalia indicate that the main period of kuduo production spans roughly from 1400 to 1900 CE.

The British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Musée du quai Branly hold representative specimens. Scholarly studies, including those by Doran H. Ross and Tom Phillips, emphasise the vessels’ dual material and spiritual value within Akan cosmology: they embody both the visible manifestation of wealth and the metaphysical continuity between life, death, and the ancestral world.

References
Ross, Doran H., Royal Arts of the Akan (Los Angeles: Fowler Museum, 1998).
Phillips, Tom, ed., Africa: The Art of a Continent (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1995).
Garrard, Timothy F., Gold of Africa: Jewellery and Ornaments from Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Mali (London: Prestel, 1989).

Height: 41 cm
Weight: 4,7 kg