Author

Sir James Mellon,  known as Jimmy,  a former diplomat whose roles included UK Ambassador to Denmark, Director General for Trade and Investment, Consul General, New York and High Commissioner to Ghana and Ambassador to Togo.

When he first went to Africa in the 1960’s, he was bowled over by African art.  He lived in Dakar, Senegal, at the time of the Festival of Negro Arts which brought together bronzes from Ife and Benin in Nigeria, wooden statues from the Congo, masks from Sierra Leone and Angola.  What really got under my skin were the bangles, principally the bronze bangles from West and Central Africa.  They were tactile, weighty and full of design and form.

Later, when he lived in Ghana and Togo he built up his own collection of bangles and in recent years began to study the collections in major museums in Europe and in the United States.  Curators encouraged and helped him build up a picture of the different types of bangles, what they were used for and where they might have come from originally.