Ghana Brass

Brass casting in Ghana stretches back many centuries — a tradition believed to have arrived via trans-Saharan trade routes and refined into an art form by the Ashanti people of the Kumasi region. Today, their descendants still work the same way their great-great-grandfathers did: by hand, with beeswax, clay, and fire.

The technique is called lost-wax casting. An artisan softens beeswax in warm water and presses it into a mold, sculpting each bead's shape by hand. Wax tubes are added, the form is wrapped in layers of clay mixed with charcoal, and the whole thing is heated in a kiln until the wax melts and pours out — leaving a hollow cavity in the exact shape of the original bead. Molten brass is poured in. Once it cools, the clay mold is broken open and discarded. Each mold makes exactly one bead. That's why no two Ghana brass beads are ever truly identical, and why each strand you receive carries the marks of the hands that made it.

Our Ghana Brass collection features Ashanti-cast strands in a full range of shapes — round beads (10mm through 22mm), rhombus and round rhombus shapes (up to 30x17mm), flat rounds, cylinders, curved cylinders, and a few Ghana Copper spiral rondelles for designers who want a slightly cooler tone. Every strand is 18 to 22 inches.

These beads are perfect as focal points in tribal-inspired jewelry, as accent beads in mixed-media designs alongside African Krobo glass or Venetian-style trade beads, in men's bracelets and chunky necklaces, in mala-style pieces, and anywhere you want real material and real story. The natural variation in size and patina is part of the character — these are not factory beads, and they aren't meant to be.

All Ghana Brass strands ship from our US warehouse. No customs paperwork, no international wait times.