- Collection type
- Object
- Description
- Wooden club with carved handle, decorated with a longitudinal zigzag (tavatava) pattern.
- Long description
- Wooden club with carved handle, decorated with a longitudinal zigzag (tavatava) pattern. The handle decoration comprises three sections of longitudinal zigzag bands, separated by a widthways band of zigzag carving. The shaft thickens very slightly along its length from the butt to the head. The head is rounded. [SM 21/03/2007]
- Date / Period
- Date made: Before 1925
- Date collected
- By 1925
- Acquisition information
- Purchased: 1925
- Materials and processes
- Material Wood Plant, Process Carved, Process Decorated
- Dimensions
- Length: max 1145 mm, Width: max 59 mm
- Object numbers
- Accession number: 1925.59.2
- Research and responses
The following notes are drawn from research compiled by Andy Mills as part of the DCF Cutting Edge project in 2006-2007.
The bowai (pron. Um-bow-eye) is another transnational club style in Western Polynesia, commonest in Fiji and of Fijian origin, but also to be found in Tonga and Samoa as the povai (Clunie, F. (2003) Fijian Weapons & Warfare. Suva: The Fiji Museum, p.128). In one sense, it is the most simple and straightforward design of club imaginable – a plain, slightly tapering cylinder – but to assume that this apparent simplicity reflects a simplicity of conception in the work of the carver would be to do the Fijian matai, Tongan tufunga and Samoan tufuga – master woodcarvers - a great disservice. Recent research (Mills, A. (2007) Tufunga Tongi ‘Akau: Tongan Club-Carvers & Their Arts. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, University of East Anglia) into the formal proportions of weapons such as the bowai has revealed that all of the weapon’s principal dimensions are carefully interrelated through a complex series of fractional relationships, mathematical squares, and so on; the formal aesthetics of their shape was not only determined by eye and hand, but also by reference to complex ideas of mathematical appropriateness; the principles of appropriateness were inscribed into the weapon by the carver, who used lengths of cordage to transfer dimensions from one part of the carving to another, subdividing and multiplying the cordage into complex fractions and multiples as he did so. Furthermore, ergonomics cannot be overlooked when discussing the form of the bowai, so close to that of an American baseball bat; of course, this is no coincidence, and the tapering cylinder offers the greatest consistency of grip and weight distribution, whether the object to be struck is a ball or a skull. [El.B 27/02/2008]
1925.59.2
Wooden club with carved handle, decorated with a longitudinal zigzag (tavatava) pattern.
On display
1925.59.2
Digital asset copyright: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford
If you wish to order a high-resolution image and/or licence its use for print or web publication, exhibition, film, promotional product or any other use, whether in the academic or commercial sector of any print run, then please visit photographic services.