African Currency & Staffs

Before banks there were iron rods and brass rings. African currency and staffs include Kissi pennies from Sierra Leone and Liberia, long twisted rods of forged iron flattened at one end, and the copper handa crosses of Katanga in the Congo, cast in sand molds. Igbo anklet currency from Nigeria, heavy brass rings once worn by women of rank, Gan bracelet currency from Burkina Faso coiled with python imagery, snake-form and gong currency, and iron blades from the Mbole, Chamba, Tikar and Kuba all stood in for money in bride wealth, trade and ritual exchange.

Staffs of office, in carved wood and forged iron, make authority visible. The forms are spare, almost modernist, the iron gone dark and dry. Mounted in a row on a wall, or one long Kissi penny leaning in a stairwell, they read as drawing in space; handa crosses stacked on a coffee table have the heft of small bronzes. Spend them carefully.