knife (general & multipurpose); sheath (general & multipurpose)

Knife with an iron blade and a wooden handle, in a wooden sheath. The blade has a raised ridge down the middle. The handle and sheath are carved with geometric designs. The sheath is made in two halves which are bound together with copper wire. At the top of the sheath, where the blade fits in, is a raised, triangular section of wood with a hole through it. There are white and pink beads strung on a thread and wrapped around the end of the sheath for decoration. The knife was made by a smith ('mhangura'), and belonged to a medicine man ('nganga').

The object has a rectangular, beige label with it, written on in pencil.

object
MUSEUM NUMBER
16.5.66/28
PLACE
COLLECTION
MEASUREMENTS
overall (knife in sheath): 189 mm x 27 mm x 27 mm
MATERIAL/TECHNIQUE
iron; wood; copper alloy; teak; glass; textile
CATEGORY
Anthropology: Ethnography
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Collection Information

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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