Chair of weapons

This photograph (figure 1) shows an object that probably no longer exists. It is the only known depiction of a chair made at the end of the nineteenth century in Perth, and used to represent Western Australia at international exhibitions in Paris and Glasgow.

International exhibitions were events where nations and colonies sought to attract prestige, economic investment or migrants through displays and other kinds of performance. Towards the end of the nineteenth century the Western Australian government decided to sponsor large and ambitious displays at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900 and the Glasgow International Exhibition of 1901.

Several writers describing Western Australia’s exhibits at Paris and Glasgow remarked upon two unusual chairs. One of them can be glimpsed in the photograph of Western Australia’s timber section at the Glasgow exhibition. At first glance, it may not seem obvious why visitors singled such a chair out! A closer look makes it clearer: each component was in fact an Aboriginal weapon.

During the nineteenth century Aboriginal weapons often featured in Australian colonies’ displays. They were normally put on walls or counters, and their incorporation into chairs is highly unusual. The legs and seat of the one photographed in Glasgow are hidden beneath a table, but its back is clearly made from five boomerangs.

Before they were shipped to Europe, a Western Australian journalist saw the chairs of weapons at their workshop in Perth, exclaiming that:

The materials used in their construction consist of native weapons, namely – kylies [boomerangs], dowarks [clubs], and shields arranged in most ingenious and pleasing devices, and, notwithstanding the peculiar materials, producing seats which are really as comfortable as they are handsome. (The West Australian, 22 January 1900, p. 3).

Many chairs depicting weapons exist, with historic European examples including ones engraved with cupids’ arrows and heraldic designs. Chairs made from weapons are much rarer, and there are very few parallels to those displayed in Paris and Glasgow. Modern chairs of weapons are often portrayed as inherently disturbing, due to their physicality and tangible connections with violence. The fictional ‘Iron Throne’ of American novelist George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series (1996-) is made from the swords of the vanquished. Martin conceived it as dangerous, ugly and intimidating. Mozambican sculptor Cristóvão (Kester) Canhavato’s ‘Throne of Weapons’ (2001) is welded from guns collected after the country’s devastating 1977–1992 civil war. And Trawlwoolway artist Julie Gough’s sculpture ‘Some Tasmanian Aboriginal children living with non-Aboriginal people before 1840’ (2008) trapped unfinished tea tree ‘spears’, representing the taken children, within the framework of an old chair. Unlike these examples, however, the two chairs displayed in Paris and Glasgow were not apparently created in order to challenge or discomfort.

Although Western Australia’s own chairs of weapons were not constructed to be visually imposing, they implicitly suggested colonial control over Aboriginal people. Their boomerangs and other components were portrayed as curiosities assembled into an entertaining diversion. The weapons collectively evoked abundance, with one visitor feeling that the exhibition organisers ‘gathered together so many of these interesting weapons that two armchairs have been made up of them’ (Marolles, p. 432). Exhibition-goers could physically participate in this display of power: at Paris the chairs were even put on a landing for weary visitors to sit upon.

It is not clear what happened to the chairs after the Glasgow Exhibition closed in November 1901. Shortly afterwards the president of Western Australia’s exhibition commission donated 52 Aboriginal objects to Glasgow Corporation Museum (now Glasgow Museums), including eleven boomerangs. However, the destination of the chairs themselves is unknown. They were most likely disassembled, and the component weapons given or sold to interested individuals or institutions.

The identities of all those who created the chairs are unclear: the craftsman who assembled them was the son of woodcarver F.W. Howitt; but the names of the Aboriginal people who crafted the weapons were not recorded. Western Australia’s exhibition commission classified the chairs alongside other timber exhibits, unlike other very similar Aboriginal objects made of wood that were classed amongst the agricultural, pastoral and general products. This distinction seems to have rested on the idea that the chairs were now fundamentally a settler rather than Aboriginal product. They act as a reminder that objects could be marshalled into symbols of colonial dominance in many different ways.

Acknowledgement:
Thanks for research assistance from Baige Zylstra of the University of Western Australia.

Figures:
1. Detail of historical photograph showing a woman looking towards the chair in Western Australia’s court at the Glasgow International Exhibition of 1901. Annan Photo, Glasgow; ‘Glasgow International Exhibition’. Courtesy Royal Western Australian Historical Society, P1999.7182.

References:

‘The Paris Exhibition’, The West Australian, Monday 22 January 1900, p. 3.

Aymee de Marolles, ‘Participation of Western Australia at the Universal Exhibition of 1900’, Le Moniteur de 1900 Organe de l’Exposition, 26 (1900), pp. 429–37.

Report of the Royal Commission, Glasgow International Exhibition,1901 (1902). State Records Office of Western Australia, AU WA S20- cons964 1902/6321, p. 39.

The Aboriginal exhibits donated in 1901 by Henry Whittall Venn (the Western Australian commissioner to the international exhibitions at Paris and Glasgow) to Glasgow Corporation Museum (now Glasgow Museums) are registered at that institution as 1901.107.a–z; 1901.112.a–e; and NHDUP1901.112.f.