Igbo-Ukwu made the earliest complex lost-wax castings in West Africa, four centuries before Ife or Benin. Three sites in Anambra State gave up more than seven hundred leaded-bronze, copper and iron objects and some 165,000 beads — among them a roped pot sheathed in a cast net of twisted cord, with grasshoppers, locusts, beetles, flies and spiders raised at its intersections.

This system takes its material honestly. The ground is dark oxidised metal; green verdigris crust carries the interface; pale corrosion bloom marks the high points and worn bronze shows where the crust has broken. Everything is wrapped in rope rather than boxed in a frame.