Ceremonial Armlet

This well-worn ivory armlet is decorated with relief figures of leopards and what might be a Portuguese figure on horseback, both being emblems of royal authority. It was given to the museum in 1906 by W. E. Johnson through the steam ship engineer Arnold Ridyard. Mr Johnson was a Sierra Leonean Krio established at Barthurst (now Banjul) in The Gambia who may have acquired the armlet some years earlier from a Sierra Leonean member of the February 1897 British military assault against Benin.