Fine New Zealand Maori ‘Toki’

A Fine New Zealand Maori ‘Toki’ the Long Slightly Curved Wood Shaft with Delicate Adze Marks Terminating with a Greenstone Adze bound with Original Flax
Early 19th Century

Size: 53cm long - 20¾ ins long

Provenance: Ex Private collection, Devon, England
By descent from a 19th century Naval family who traveled extensively around the British Empire

cf A similar example sold by Finch and Co in ‘Polynesia; The Mark and Carolyn Blackburn Collection of Polynesian Art’; Adrienne L. Kaeppler, 2010, item number, 476, page 344
A further example can be found in Art and Artefacts of the Pacific, Africa and the Americas, The James Hooper Collection; Steven Phelps, 1976, plate no. 12, item no. 86, page 44

Before the introduction of metal, tools were limited but efficient. Nephrite ‘pounamu’ was highly prized, however ‘greywacke’ was more readily available and commonly used. The stone adze ‘toki’ was the principal tool used for felling and dressing timber, the blade secured to a strong, elbow-haft handle cut from a natural fork in the tree.
Nephrite, number six on Moh’s hardness scale, was preferred as material because of its greater ability to take and retain a sharp working edge. It occurs in outcrops in the regions of the Taramakau and Arahura Rivers on the west coast of the South Island and near Lake Wakatipu further south.