In 1907, Louis Desplagnes wrote of the ‘astonishing perfection’ of Dogon blacksmiths, calling the specialists who made copper ornaments like this figure pendant by the lost-wax process ‘especially expert and delicate workers’ (“Le Plateau central nigérien”, Paris, Pp. 367-369). Unfortunately, he and subsequent authors provided little information abouth the origin of copper and its smiths among the Dogon. There is no geological or archeological evidence for copper mining in the Dogon area, although copper has been traded and worked into ornaments there for centuries. The Dogon may have obtained the metal through the trans-Saharan trade networks that brought copper from Spain, North African, and the Sahara to commercial centers of the Sahel and the Sudan. This pendant in the form of a seated figure has a smooth surface and sinuous limbs – just as an example in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art given to them by Lester Wunderman (inv. 1977.394.30). Descriptions of the regalia worn by the hogon, a village’s spiritual leader, sometimes include copper alloy rings, bracelets, and amulets, and Dogon women are also said to have worn such amulets. It perhaps was once associated with Nommo, the mythical being who was said to embody this luminous material and in Dogon thought represents order, purity, fertility, and life.