Tim
I apologise for the lighting. I am living in temporary accommodation at the moment and the room has a fluorescent light. Or my pictures are taken at the storage warehouse where the bulk of my collection is housed. However, I also need to make more of an effort to master this camera of mine and play with the settings.
I have seen many of the arm and ankle bands of the type you have. In Johannesburg this material floods into flea markets, brought in by Africans from further north. Whenever I asked about their origins the two locations given to me for this metalwork were: Ivory Coast and Cameroon.
I think it's interesting metalwork. I know what you're saying about the crudity of the work. I can only guess that this stuff is cast and that they use the moulds over and over again, resulting in a poorer quality casting. The quality of the work on Benin metalware is often much higher.
Nonetheless, I look back to the antiquities I used to collect, often bronzes of this type, from places like Elam, Luristan and the like, and there are enormous similarities. Both in the style and the motifs.
This makes them interesting.
They indeed reflect the bronze age in many ways.
Whether both your articles and mine are created for a curio market, I simply do not know. There is a possibility that they are. A good possibility.
My suspicion is that all these pieces, authentic and those produced for tourists, may be coming from the same moulds.
The casting on your pieces is better than the casting on mine.
However, in all the time I was in Johannesburg and all the many thousands of artefacts of this type I saw, I never once saw these axes or anything like them.
They were among a number of cast African pieces from the very same collection that I secured the NW Pacific club from.
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