Club, Tonga

This club, or ‘akau, is an old example of one of the several forms of type called apa‘apai. It has four ridged collars throughout its upper half, with each successive collar having an increasing number of ridges, with four, then five, then six, and then seven in the top register. Carved from dense, heavy toa (Casuarina equisetifolia), the surface of the club retains the marks left by stone and shell tools.

See Annick Notter, ed., Océanie. Curieux, navigateurs et savants, Paris, 1997, p. 185, cat. no. 171 for a similar club donated to the Château-Musée, Boulogne-sur-Mer in 1841 by Claude du Campe de Rosamel, the French naval minister who, in 1837, launched the second voyage of the Astrolabe.