Weapons & Tools Artifacts

Adwa, 1896, an Ethiopian victory, and the spears that came out of it. Antique weapons and tools come from Africa, India, China, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, made for war, hunting, craft and the farm. Naga shields of buffalo hide from the hills of northeast India, Dayak shields from Borneo, Zulu spears and Mbuti arrows sit beside those Adwa spears and blades in their scabbards. Prehistoric knapped stone blades from East Africa, a technology first used in Kenya some 1.7 million years ago, are the oldest tools of all. Craft fills the rest: Indian wooden textile printing blocks, carpenter’s plumb lines, crop seeders, a jeweler’s torch in the form of a bird, Ethiopian mukecha coffee mortars and carved door locks from Mali and Burkina Faso.

Iron rubbed dark, hide stiff with age and wood polished by work give these objects a frank, graphic presence. A shield above a fireplace, printing blocks on steel shelving: sculpture, with a past.