Agricultural bill-hook. With a wooden handle and S-shaped metal blade. The handle is mostly straight but bends slightly with the natural shape of the wood, the end is flared where the blade is set. The outside edge of the metal blade is thicker than the inner cutting edge, the tip is pointed. [AB [OPS Move] 9/1/2017]

Collection type: Object
Description: Agricultural bill-hook. With a wooden handle and S-shaped metal blade. The handle is mostly straight but bends slightly with the natural shape of the wood, the end is flared where the blade is set. The outside edge of the metal blade is thicker than the inner cutting edge, the tip is pointed. [AB [OPS Move] 9/1/2017]
Geographical reference: Kenya
Africa > Eastern Africa > Kenya; Western Province Lumboka or Chetambe
Cultural groups: Bukusu
Person: Field collector William John Ansorge; Field collector Wakitosh Expedition; PRM source Henry Balfour
Date / Period: Date made: Before 08/1895
Date collected: Between 9 and 22 August 1895
Acquisition information: Donated: 1901
Materials and processes: Material Wood Plant, Material Metal, Material Iron Metal, Process Carved, Process Forged (Metal)
Dimensions: Width: max 85 mm, Depth: max 50 mm, Length: max 1010 mm
Object numbers: Accession number: 1901.4.142
Research and responses: For a brief account of the Chetambe or Lumboka–Chetambe War (formerly known as 'the Wakitosh expedition') during which this object was 'obtained', with special reference to surviving material culture, see pages 393–7 of 'Africa, Oceania and the Americas', by Jeremy Coote, in Arthur MacGregor (ed.), The Cobbe Cabinet of Curiosities: An Anglo-Irish Country House Museum (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2015), pp. 374–403. As well as the collection at the PRM, there is a Bukusu reaping knife in the Cobbe Museum (see fig. 244 on pp. 398–9). [JC 22 4 2015]

Search terms: Tool, Agriculture and Horticulture, Hook, Agricultural Tool, Knife

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