African Arts Gallery

This blade is extended by a pommel lined with copper. Oxidized metal, patina of use.

The Mongo group living in the northwest Congo, is famous for its costumes, its weapons, and its metal jewelry and not for its almost non-existent statuary. The Konda who used this type of short sword form one of the tribes of the group.
In Africa, before the colonial period, payments were never made in coins. Transactions were made using cowries, pearls, cattle, kola nuts, but also metals, especially iron. These primitive currencies were used during commercial and social exchanges, for dowries in particular, but could also come from objects of parade or throwing weapons. In Sierra Leone, goods were valued against iron bars called barriferri. In 1556 in Djenné Jean-Léon the African observed that the populations used iron to pay for "things of little value". The king generally controlled the production or routing of the kingdom's currency. The variety of these metallic forms is wide, and these sometimes take on the appearance of particularly aesthetic non-figurative sculpture.