Kasena Stone Armband, Ghana

Rust speckles and a lumpy outline give this ring plenty to say.

This armband is Kasena, from Northern Ghana, West Africa. It is granite. Granite is a hard, coarse-grained igneous rock, and shaping it into a ring requires patient grinding and polishing with abrasives. Slightly squashed ring in dark brown with orange-red flecking across the lower half. Pale mineral patches show at the bottom edge, and the band bulges unevenly toward the top of the opening. It is 0.5 inches deep and 4 in diameter.

Rough around the edges and rather proud of it, really.