Ukama: Mother and Child Shona Sculpture

There is no bond older than this one. A mother leans over her child, arms curved into a shelter, and the two shapes wind together until you cannot say where one ends and the other begins.

The Ukama Mother and Child sculpture comes from Zimbabwe, hand-carved from rapoka, a warm reddish-brown serpentine found in local deposits. The artist works it with simple hand-held chisels, then finishes the piece the traditional way: sanded smooth, warmed over fire, and polished with beeswax until the stone gives up its color. The heat is what brings out those deep browns, greens, and gold flecks. No two pieces come out alike, because no two pieces of stone are alike.

The form itself is spare and modern. A single rising spiral, two rounded heads, an arm that becomes a shoulder that becomes the base. Set it on a mantel, a console, a nightstand, or a desk, and it quietly holds the room. Available in 4-inch, 6-inch, and 8-inch heights so that you can place one alone or group all three together.

Ukama is the Shona word for relatedness, kinship, and close family relationships. In Shona thought, it reaches beyond the household to the extended family, the clan, the ancestors who came before, and the generations yet to come. Wealth is not the measure of a life in this worldview; the measure is whether you built a strong and loving family. 

The Shona are Zimbabwe's largest ethnic group, and their history with stone runs deep. The walls and towers of Great Zimbabwe, the medieval city that gave the nation its name, were raised without mortar between the 11th and 15th centuries. The country's name, itself a Shona term, translates as "house of stone." The sculpture tradition you are looking at is the contemporary branch of that heritage. It took shape in the 1950s and 1960s, gained international attention through exhibitions in London, Paris, and New York. 

Every piece is carved by hand, one at a time, from stone pulled out of the ground rather than poured into a mold. Expect variation. The color can lean browner, greener, or grayer than what you see in the photograph, and the flecking, veining, and polish depth will vary from stone to stone. The carving itself varies, too. Look closely at the three sizes in the image, and you will notice the spiral and the base are shaped a little differently on each one, which is the artist's hand responding to the particular block in front of him. Your sculpture will be recognizably this design, and it will also be the only one exactly like it in the world. That is the point of buying handmade.

Its recurring themes are the ones that matter most in Shona life: family, the spirits, nature, and above all, mother and child. The stone comes from the Great Dyke, a geological formation running roughly 300 kilometers through central Zimbabwe that yields more than two hundred named varieties of serpentine, each with its own color, hardness, and character.

Give it to a new mother. Give it on Mother's Day. Give it any day you want to say something you do not have words for. Choose your size and bring this piece home.