Dagger with two edged blade and carved handle inlaid with brass. [SM 14/06/2007]

Collection type: Object
Description: Dagger with two edged blade and carved handle inlaid with brass. [SM 14/06/2007]
Long description: Dagger with two edged blade and carved handle inlaid with brass. The dagger blade curves upwards towards the tip and has three grooves, incised wavy lines and four stamped star shapes on either side. The handle is carved with a brass ferrule decorated with incised lines and cross hatching, two brass bands on the grip and a hemispherical pommel. The front of the handle is also decorated with inlaid brass circles. [SM 14/06/2007]
Geographical reference: Guinea
Africa > Western Africa > Guinea; Sierra Leone
Africa > Western Africa > Sierra Leone; Futa Jalon [Rio Pongo] [Freeport] [Freetown]
Cultural groups: Mandinka
Person: Field collector Thomas Cooper; Field collector Thomas Guest; PRM source Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Date / Period: Date made: Before 02/1797
Date collected: By February 1797
Acquisition information: Transferred: 10/02/1886
Materials and processes: Material Iron Metal, Material Wood Plant, Material Brass Metal, Process Forged (Metal), Process Carved, Process Incised, Process Stamped, Process Inlaid
Dimensions: Width: max 42 mm, Length: max 420 mm
Object numbers: Accession number: 1886.1.562.1 Other numbers: 86 562
Research and responses: This is part of a collection obtained from the Sierra Leone Company [SLC] factor Thomas Cooper, based at the SLC factory at Freeport on the River Pongo (in what is now Guinea), by the SLC surgeon Thomas Guest, based at Freetown, Sierra Leone, and sent by Guest to Dr John Sims in London before 15 June 1797. (See scans and transcriptions of Guest's letters to Sims in RDF: Biographies: Sims.) See also ‘“The Complete Accoutrements of an Inhabitant of the Mandingo Country”: An Eighteenth-Century Collection from West Africa at the Pitt Rivers Museum’, by Jeremy Coote, in Journal of Museum Ethnography, no. 24 (2011), pp. 150–68. (Copy in RDF: Biographies: Sims.) [JC 6 4 2012]
Associated publications: Reference: Finding the Forgotten: Locating Transatlantic Slavery in The Pitt Rivers Museum Collection, Main author: Jane Webster, 2025, Page: 118; Listed as number 86 on page 181 of A Catalogue of the Ashmolean Museum Descriptive of the Zoological Specimens, Antiquities, Coins, and Miscellaneous Curiosities (Oxford, 1836): 'African Arms, &c. 86. African dagger. (Dr. Simms, London, 1826.' [JC 24 6 2011] For a detailed account of the collection of which this is a part, see ‘“The Complete Accoutrements of an Inhabitant of the Mandingo Country”: An Eighteenth-Century Collection from West Africa at the Pitt Rivers Museum’, by Jeremy Coote, in Journal of Museum Ethnography, no. 24 (2011), pp. 150–68. This object (with its knife; 1886.1.562.1) is illustrated in black-and-white as Figure 4 on page 159. Caption (same page) reads: 'Iron knife with wooden handle and leather sheath; maximum length 420 mm; part of the John Sims collection at the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (1886.1.562).' (Copy of the article in RDF: Biographies: Sims.) [JC 6 4 2012]

Search terms: Weapon, Tool, Dagger, Knife