Cleveland Museum of Art

Ceremonial Axe (gano)

Date

1900s, by 1928

Medium

Iron, wood, and metal

Culture

Southern Africa, Zimbabwe, Shona-style blacksmith-carver

Department

African Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

This ceremonial axe ( gano ) showcases its maker’s skill in using different materials. The crescent-shaped blade was likely locally forged; braided wires and a Swiss pocket watch fragment on the handle were imported. Like the headrest nearby, gano were gendered female; a small headrest is carved at top. Too fine for battle, a man may have held it as a status or ancestral symbol during rituals or dancing. Though made for centuries, religious use of knives and axes waned due to early 20th-century Christianity and government laws. Rising independence-era Zimbabwean nationalism (1960s–70s) revived tradition-based religion and associated objects like the gano. This ceremonial axe has a half-moon piece of metal nailed to it, marked "EKB Depose." It is part of the mechanism for a pocket watch made by Edward Kummer of Bettlach, whose Swiss factories marked watches with his initials between 1888 and 1932.

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