The Asante Ewer

Fascinating small exhibition at the British Museum highlighting a medieval ewer and its journey to Africa and back.

Made in England between 1340 and 1405, the ewer later travelled to West Africa. In the 1880s it was photographed in a courtyard of the royal palace of the Asantehene, king of the Asante people, in Kumasi (in present-day Ghana). During the Anglo-Asante War of 1896 it was looted by British forces and later purchased by the British Museum.

A second ewer, also taken in 1896 and shown in the same photograph, was presented to the Prince of Wales's Own (West Yorkshire) Regiment. This display reunites the two.

It was amazing how one object could tell a little-known story of medieval trade, how English objects had been treated as sacred items in Africa and Victorian colonialism. 

Closed 7 June 2026

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