Further Media
Producer unknown to us
Oceania, Polynesia, Aotearoa/New Zealand
Before 1892
Nephrite (Greenstone)
Acquired in 1773–74 or 1777 on Captain James Cook’s second or third expedition in the Pacific. It is yet unknown by whom the object was acquired.
Brought from Great Britain to Germany by Benjamin La Trobe, a Moravian working in London.
Inv. no. 68732
A green nephrite axe was one of the most prized possessions of the Māori, the Polynesian inhabitants of Aotearoa/New Zealand. It usually consisted of a combination of a jade-green, ground and polished blade with an elaborately carved wooden handle. It is, thus, likely that the blade in the Herrnhut Cook collection was acquired before it was completed into a ceremonial axe.
When Captain Cook made the first successful landfall on Aotearoa/New Zealand in 1769 through his intermediary, the Tahitian priest-voyager Tupaia, he immediately noticed these blades in his encounters with the Māori: “Their axes they value above all that they possess, and never would part with one of them for any thing that we could give.” In fact the toki, whose raw material nephrite (pounamu) is mainly found on New Zealand’s South Island (Te Wai Pounamu), were used as a melee and status weapon by high-ranking leaders (ariki).
Greenstone was the hardest and most durable material used by Māori before the introduction of iron tools from Europe. Greenstone axes were also often decorated with sacred red feathers of the New Zealand kākā (Nestor meridionalis) to evoke the divine energy of the ancestors – the mana – during ceremonies or in battle.