Oromo Iron Blade with Scabbard

Nineteenth-century Ethiopia. A blade is a weapon. It is also a way of saying who you are.

Iron, leather, silver and wood, twenty-three inches overall. The straight, tapering blade rests in a fitted leather scabbard of warm tan, with a single raised ridge down its center and a softly rounded tip. The grip is the thing: built up in alternating bands of pale and dark material and capped by a flat T-shaped pommel. The leather has a mellow, handled surface, with faint scratches and tonal variation.

Hilts and scabbards, there, were finished with care. It shows.