Snake Pendant

In societies without hereditary chiefs, such as the Akan-speaking peoples of southern Côte d’Ivoire, political and economic elevation remained open to people with the initiative and skill to advance. Once established as a community leader, an individual commissioned his or her own personal regalia, such as this pendant. To reinforce the point, a person of prominence eventually arranged an “exhibition of gold” to display the depth of his or her personal wealth and to entertain (and feed) the community. The Ebrié say on such occasions that “he [or she] has added something to the family chest.”

PROVENANCE
Museum records suggest that this snake pendant may have once been found in the personal collection of Abrogoua, a “king” (or, at least, a powerful chief) of the Ebrié who died in 1811. From there, it entered the Paris collection of Charles Ratton, a pioneering early dealer in both African and medieval art, who arranged to have the pendant shown in an ethnographic context at the Trocadéro museum, in Paris. In 1938 Ratton sold the work to Frederick Pleasants, a leader in the developing aesthetic approach to African art in New York, who would later serve as curator of the African collection at Brooklyn. In 1944 the pendant found its way into the collection of Alastair B. Martin, an important mid-twentieth-century collector in New York, who finally offered it to Brooklyn.