Kasena Stone Armband, Ghana

Near black, laced with white threads like cracked ice on a pond.

This armband is Kasena, from Northern Ghana, West Africa. It is granite. Armbands and bracelets of stone, metal and ivory have been worn across West Africa, where they may signal age, status or belonging to a group. Dark ring with a smooth profile and thin white veins branching across the lower and right sides. A pale slash crosses the top left, and a faint ridge runs along the inner face. It is 0.5 inches deep and 4.5 in diameter.

Handsome in black and not afraid of a few lines.