The fascinating treasure of exotic currencies

6/6/2022, 9:40:48 PM

In gold or silver, but also in pearls, feathers or shells, simple iron ingots or opulent jewels: the two hundred ethnological objects brought together on the Quai de Conti in Paris have in common that they were produced to be exchanged. They are a guarantee of abundance, prestige and happiness.

Numismatists will fall out of their chairs.

What?

Feathers, beads, shells or even iron bars?

And more stones, teeth, salt, amber, carnelian, mother-of-pearl or fabrics?

All this in addition to gold and silver?

This is something that never appears in their collections.

And yet: the some two hundred objects installed at the Hôtel de la Monnaie in Paris, a place just opposite the Louvre where coins and medals have been minted since the 11th century, are all supports that have, throughout the world, once or in the past, materialized the exchanges.

To discover

Discover the “Best of the Goncourt Prize” collection

Kuba velvet from Zaire, heavy bracelets from Côte d'Ivoire, embroidered textiles from Timor, dazzling Polynesian feather rolls...

"We condescendingly called them paleo-money

," laments Bérénice Geoffroy-Schneiter.

This non-Western jewelery and adornment specialist with a very insightful gaze and who knows how to play with borders like chapels underlines, on the contrary, their sophistication, their polysemy.

And also…

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