Courtyard in either the royal mausoleum or in the palace of the King of Asante, where The Asante Jug (Richard II Ewer) can be seen, ca. 1887. The National Archives of the UK, ref. CO1069/31(7). Photographer unknown

Resting beneath a tree, two late fourteenth-century English jugs taken from Kumasi by the British at the end of the nineteenth century. We do not know when or how they arrived in the Asante capital. It is possible they traveled across Saharan trade routes as early as the fifteenth century; however, it is more probable that they were given as gifts to a local ruler by Europeans trading on the Gold Coast at a later period, witnesses to the shift from desert to coastal trade. The image was taken by an anonymous photographer around 1887, in a courtyard in either the royal mausoleum or in the palace of the King of Asante.