A brass padlock with inlaid panels of brass and copper incised with floral and zig-zag designs.
This kind of padlock is called 'tamask', 'tanast' or 'taseghfelt' in Tamasheq; the French word 'cadenas' is also used. Such rectangular locks are generally used to secure leather bags. In this case the lock is opened with one key, although some locks require several keys to open them.
These objects are only a part of our collections, of which there are more than 350,000 objects. This information comes from our collections database. Some of this is incomplete and there may be errors. This part of the website is also still under construction, so there may be some fields repeated or incorrectly formatted information.
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