Kasena Stone Armband, Ghana

A heavy dark ring with a worn skin, shaped by hands long ago.

This granite armband is Kasena, from Northern Ghana, West Africa. Granite is a hard, coarse-grained igneous rock, so shaping it into a wearable ring takes patient grinding and polishing. A thick, smooth ring of dark stone with a wide round opening. The surface is matte and mottled with brownish tones, small nicks, and a few pitted spots, and the outer edge is gently uneven. It is 3.75 inches wide, 3.75 deep and 0.75 high.

It has the confidence of something that never needed polishing.