Blade from a Ceremonial Adze (1800s): Art, History and Details

Blade from a Ceremonial Adze (1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Before European contact, Polynesian carving tools were fashioned from bone, shell, stone, or teeth. The introduction of iron tools facilitated carving, while the demand of European sailors and missionaries for souvenirs provided a new market for craft products. Ceremonial adzes probably represented gods or spirits. The wooden handle of this example is carved with the characteristic K motif. The stone adze blade is lashed to the handle with finely plaited sennit fiber cord. According to legend, the distinctive pattern formed by the sennit lashing was taught to Mangaian craftsman by the gods.

Object facts

• Title: Blade from a Ceremonial Adze
• Date: 1800s
• Culture: Polynesia, Mangaia, Cook Islands, 19th century
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: stone
• Dimensions: Blade: 9.3 x 3.6 cm (3 11/16 x 1 7/16 in.)
• Collection: Oceanic Art
• Department: Oceania
• Accession number: 1940.1078.b

Collection credit

Gift of Richard Inglis

Further reading listed by the museum

• William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, and Ralph T. Coe. The Imagination of Primitive Man: A Survey of the Arts of the Non-Literate Peoples of the World. Kansas City, Mo: The Museum, 1962.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.