FAST FACTS
Name: Asante spider
What it is: A sword ornament in gold
Where is it from: Kumasi, Ghana
When it was made: Late 19th century
In 1884, Sir Samuel Rowe, the British Governor of the Gold Coast, was visited by Bosommuru, the chief spokesman of the Asante royal court in Kumasi, the imperial capital. During the state visit, Bosommuru Rowe presented the gold spider as a sign of friendship from Kwaku Dua II. According to Roslyn Walker, a curator at the Dallas Museum of Art who researched the the story of the spidersaid Bosommuru that the spider was a symbol of wisdom and that only the king was allowed to wear the spider emblem on his sword.
But Rowe decided to return the golden spider to the king, as it was illegal for British officials to accept gifts – so he sent it back to Kumasi with a British envoy, Robert Low Brandon-Kirby. It’s unclear how Brandon-Kirby ended up owning the golden spider, but he took it with him to the United States, where he teamed up with a Scotsman named James Cree to buy land in the southwest – upsetting the locals, who thought Brandon-Kirby was incredibly pompous and rude.
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Walker noted that according to a family history told by Charles Cree, “BK made himself unpopular with the locals. Word reached him that a lynch party was coming to kill him, so he quickly sold himself out at a reasonable price to my grandfather (James), and allowed himself to be smuggled out of the country in a pickle barrel.” The golden spider was handed down through generations of Cree family members before it was purchased by the Dallas Museum of Art.
The traveled royal Asante spider ornament is unique, according to Walker, and “no other cast gold spiders have appeared in (Asante) collections to date.”
For more amazing archaeological finds, check out our Amazing Artifacts archives.
