DC -- Natl Museum of African Art -- Exhibit: Striking Iron: The Art of African Blacksmiths:
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- Description of Pictures: Striking Iron: The Art of African Blacksmiths
April 17, 2019 – October 20, 2019
For more than two millennia, ironworking has shaped African cultures in the most fundamental ways. Striking Iron: The Art of African Blacksmiths reveals the history of invention and technical sophistication that led African blacksmiths to transform one of Earth’s most basic natural resources into objects of life-changing utility, empowerment, prestige, spiritual potency, and astonishing artistry.
Striking Iron is an international traveling exhibition organized by the Fowler Museum at UCLA that combines scholarship with objects of great aesthetic beauty to create the most comprehensive treatment of the blacksmith’s art in Africa to date. The exhibition includes over 225 artworks from across the African continent focusing on the region south of the Sahara and covering a time period spanning early archaeological evidence to the present day. Striking Iron features artworks from the Fowler collection as well as American and European public and private collections.
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- Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
- IRON_190626_001.JPG: Striking Iron
The Art of African Blacksmiths
- IRON_190626_021.JPG: Camel charm and chain Eastern desert region, Egypt
Meteoritic iron
- IRON_190626_028.JPG: Striking Iron
The Art of African Blacksmiths
- IRON_190626_044.JPG: Iron and Cosmologies
Dogon and Mythical Nommo
- IRON_190626_047.JPG: Smetling
From Bloom to Bar
- IRON_190626_049.JPG: Eastern smelting furnaces in the Seno Plain below Segue, Burkina Faso, 1957
- IRON_190626_052.JPG: A blacksmith/smelter holds a raw, horseshoe-shaped iron bloom produced from local ore in the earthen furnace behind him.
Benjeli, German Togoland, 1914
- IRON_190626_056.JPG: Sustenance from the Anvil
- IRON_190626_068.JPG: Hoes of Authority and Prosperity
- IRON_190626_072.JPG: Iron and Cosmologies
Bamana Blacksmith Leaders
- IRON_190626_082.JPG: Kamilamba
Tomb 7
- IRON_190626_086.JPG: Great Zimbabwe
- IRON_190626_091.JPG: Africa's Iron Origins
Archeological Evidence
- IRON_190626_098.JPG: Iron's Material Transformation
- IRON_190626_101.JPG: Forging
The Blacksmith's Tools
- IRON_190626_110.JPG: Iron's Empowering Roles
- IRON_190626_116.JPG: Fon Altars for Honoring the Dead
Asen
- IRON_190626_124.JPG: Yoruba, Edo, and Fon
Iron's Performance Power
- IRON_190626_151.JPG: Forging Life's Passages
- IRON_190626_173.JPG: Blades of Power and Prestige
- IRON_190626_193.JPG: Blades of Value
- IRON_190626_206.JPG: Throwing Knives
Beauty that Strikes
- IRON_190626_209.JPG: Lamellophones
- IRON_190626_216.JPG: Sounding Forms
- IRON_190626_219.JPG: Striking Iron
The Art of African Blacksmiths
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