A Shona dancing axe tsomho

A Shona dancing axe tsomho

Zimbabwe

the shaft with an ovoid head having a carved band of beads and with a metal blade having incised linear decoration, 19th century,

81cm long,

and an Ila axe, with a root handle and a metal blade,19th century, 67cm long. (2)

Provenance

Leopold Kessler (1864 - 1944) and thence by descent.

Leopold Kessler was born in Prussia. He studied at the Mining Academy in Freiberg and then for a year at the Royal School of Mining in Berlin. Leaving Germany after his studies because he no longer wanted to live in a country where Jews were treated as 2nd class citizens. He became a mining engineer in Rhodesia before going in 1896 to the Transvaal to become the general manager of a mine.