Traditional Art of Gabon: Brass Adornments of the Fang
" In a little bay we pass we see eight native women, Fans clearly, by their bright brown faces, and their loads of brass bracelets and armlets, intent on breaking up a stockaded fish-trap. " Mary Kingsley, 1895, Travels in West Africa. Mary Kingsley speculated that these eight ladies were wearing anklets, but couldn't see them since they were standing in the water. Living in Gabon in the 1990s, I bought one such bracelet (below), with beautiful incised decoration, from an elderly Fang lady who had a battered mask with her and an aged leather pouch containing this bracelet, an arrowhead-shaped piece of iron and a very simple thin brass bangle. A richly decorated copper alloy bracelet I purchased from an elderly Fang lady in Gabon in the 1990s (RS.AF2). A similar example is illustrated in Grébert (1932) reproduced in Grébert et al. (2003) ' Another brass ornament (see below), too large for a bracelet and too small for a neck collar, is just the right size to be worn o...