I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM
The Throne of Weapons
▶ Listen · narrated
Most objects in this building arrived through empire. This one was made in 2002, signed by its maker, and bought with his consent. That matters.
At a glance
- Date
- 2002
- Creator
- Cristóvão Canhavato
- Type
- Sculpture
- Material
- Decommissioned weapons
Look closer
The seat is a throne only by irony
The form suggests authority — a high back, armrests, a raised seat — but the material contradicts it. Rifle barrels, trigger guards, and stocks are welded into a structure that offers no comfort. The guns face outward and upward, still visibly guns. This is not a throne that confers power. It is a throne that displays what power cost.
These were working weapons, not symbolic ones
The rifles were collected through demobilisation programmes after Mozambique's sixteen-year civil war ended in 1992. They are AK-47s and similar assault rifles, the standard infantry weapon of late twentieth-century conflict. They show wear: scratched metal, missing parts, the patina of use. Canhavato did not forge allegories. He welded the actual tools of the actual war.
The maker signed it
Cristóvão Canhavato is a trained sculptor who worked with the Transforming Arms into Tools project, an initiative that exchanged decommissioned weapons for practical goods. His signature places this work in a named artistic tradition, not in the category of anonymous craft. The British Museum acquired it as contemporary art, a purchase from a living maker who retained agency over the transaction.
The story
Mozambique's civil war began in 1977, two years after independence, and ran until 1992. It killed perhaps a million people and displaced millions more. When it ended, the country was left with an estimated six million small arms, many of them buried or hidden. The peace was fragile. Weapons in circulation meant the possibility of violence remained close.
The Transforming Arms into Tools project, led by Bishop Dinis Sengulane of the Anglican Church, offered an exchange: bring in a weapon, receive a tool or a piece of equipment. A gun for a sewing machine, a plough, a bicycle. The scheme collected thousands of firearms. Some were destroyed. Others were given to artists.
Cristóvão Canhavato, known by the nickname Kester, was one of those artists. He had trained as a sculptor and worked in metal. The project gave him access to material that carried enormous symbolic weight. He chose to make furniture: chairs, thrones, a tree. The guns remain recognisable. He did not melt them down or disguise them. The rifle stocks and barrels are still rifle stocks and barrels, but they have been made to hold a new shape.
The throne form is deliberate. It evokes authority, power, the seat from which commands are given. But the material undercuts that reading. These are the weapons of foot soldiers, not kings. The chair is uncomfortable, bristling, a structure built from instruments of harm. It does not celebrate power. It asks what power was built on.
The British Museum acquired the work in the early 2000s. It has been exhibited widely since then, often as a contemporary counterpoint to the historical collections. It is one of the few objects in the building made by a living artist, acquired through purchase, with the maker's full knowledge and consent. That provenance is part of its meaning.
Why it mattered then
In 2002, Mozambique was a decade past the end of the civil war, but the war's material residue remained. Guns were still in the ground, still in circulation, still a fact of daily life in many areas. The Transforming Arms into Tools project was not symbolic politics. It was an attempt to remove functional weapons from a fragile peace. Canhavato's work emerged from that practical effort. The throne was not made for a museum. It was made in a workshop in Maputo, as part of a programme that was trying to reduce the likelihood of renewed violence. The choice to turn weapons into art rather than simply destroying them added a second transformation: the guns became not just inert, but visible. They could be looked at, thought about, used to tell a story about what the country had been through. The work also marked a shift in how Mozambican artists engaged with the war. Earlier responses had been immediate, documentary, often constrained by the fact that the conflict was still happening. By 2002, there was enough distance to make something reflective. Canhavato was not reporting. He was interpreting.
Why it matters now
The throne has become one of the British Museum's most frequently exhibited contemporary works, often used to open conversations about conflict, peace-building, and the role of art in post-war societies. It appears in discussions about how museums collect modern material, and what it means for a historical institution to acquire contemporary art. It also functions as a provenance counterpoint. The British Museum holds thousands of objects taken during colonial rule, military campaigns, and unequal exchanges. The throne's acquisition was different: a purchase from a living maker, a transaction in which both parties had agency. That does not resolve the broader questions about the museum's collection, but it demonstrates that other models are possible. The work has been lent to other institutions, used in educational programmes, and reproduced in discussions about the arms trade and post-conflict reconstruction. It has become an image that circulates beyond the object itself. That circulation has risks: the throne can become too easy, too available as a symbol, its specificity — Mozambique, 2002, these particular guns — flattened into a general statement about war. But the object itself resists that flattening. The rifles remain visible, individual, made by particular manufacturers for particular conflicts.
The surprising detail
The British Museum has called it the most eloquent object in the collection. That claim is striking, given that the collection includes the Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon sculptures, and objects from five thousand years of human history. The museum does not usually speak in superlatives about contemporary acquisitions. The description suggests that eloquence, for the institution, is not only about age or aesthetic refinement. It is also about clarity of statement, and the throne's statement is direct.
How it got here
The British Museum acquired the throne by purchase in the early 2000s, directly from the artist or through a recognised dealer, as part of a deliberate effort to collect contemporary African art. The transaction was conducted with Cristóvão Canhavato's knowledge and consent, and the work remains under copyright. This acquisition model — purchase from a living maker — is notably different from the colonial-era acquisitions that dominate the museum's African collections, and the museum has presented it as an example of ethical contemporary collecting practice.
Remember this
A living artist, a signed work, a purchase not a seizure. Provenance can be straightforward when the maker is still alive.
Test yourself
Why might turning decommissioned weapons into visible art be more effective than simply destroying them?
Destruction removes the guns but also removes the evidence. The weapons disappear, and with them the opportunity to reckon with what they meant. Art keeps the material present but transforms its function. The rifles in Canhavato's throne are still recognisable as rifles — viewers see what they were — but they can no longer be used as rifles. The transformation is visible, which makes it a story that can be told. The object becomes a record of both the violence and the decision to end it. That double presence, harm and repair in the same form, is what destruction cannot offer.
Go deeper
Image: Photograph by Mike Peel ( www.mikepeel.net ).. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source.