instrumentUhi

uhi · Māori

An albatross-bone chisel, struck

The Tohunga-ta-moko at Work. Painting by Gottfried Lindauer of Māori tattoo (moko) being carved into a man’s face by a skilled tattooist (tohunga-tā-moko).

Gottfried Lindauer · Public domain

struckworked

2hands

Made of	albatross bone, bone
Points	a straight or toothed cutting edge
Held	the tohunga-tā-moko holds the uhi and the mallet

What it is

A chisel of albatross bone hafted to a handle and struck with a mallet, cutting a groove that the pigment fills.

The long version

Pigment lived in carved vessels called oko, buried between uses and passed down the generations. A feeding funnel, the kōrere, was used while a face was healing.

Steel needles replaced the uhi in the late nineteenth century: faster, safer, and smooth. In 2007 it was reported back in use by some practitioners.

Connected to

Tā moko What it makes.
Cut The method.

Named here by

Tā moko The chisel.
Cut The chisel.

Where each claim comes from

Field	Tier	Source	Note
default	cited	Tā moko — Wikipedia (en)
text_th	inference		written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated

Sources

Tā moko — Wikipedia (en)

cited Cited — a named source, linked · harvested Harvested — fetched from an open dataset, with its licence · tradition Tradition — general knowledge of the tradition, hedged · inference Inference — this project's own reasoning from the above · field Field — someone stood there

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