Short Club (Wahaika) (mid 1800s): Art, History and Details

Short Club (Wahaika) (mid 1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The wahaika, carried in a belt, was used by the Maori in hand-to-hand combat. Early, undecorated clubs were made of stone. Bone and wood clubs were decorated with increasingly complex carved designs. The small figure clinging to the side of this club may well represent the supernatural power (mana) of the weapon, while the face at the end of the grip expresses the aggression of combat.

Object facts

• Title: Short Club (Wahaika)
• Date: mid 1800s
• Culture: Polynesia, New Zealand, Maori people, mid-19th Century
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: wood
• Dimensions: Overall: 35.6 cm (14 in.)
• Collection: Oceanic Art
• Department: Oceania
• Accession number: 1964.455

Collection credit

The Mary Spedding Milliken Memorial Collection, Gift of William Mathewson Milliken

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.