- Collection type
- Object
- Description
- End-blown trumpet/flute, putorino, carved from wood, which is of two pieces bound together with plant fibre. [JC 14 12 2007]
- Long description
- End-blown trumpet/flute, putorino, carved from wood, which is of two pieces bound together with plant fibre. There is a small band of decorative carving around the centre. [JC 14 12 2007]
- Cultural groups
- Māori
- Person
- Maker Unknown Maker
- Field collector Unknown Collector
- PRM source Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers founding collection
- Date / Period
- Date made: Before 1874
- Date collected
- Prior to 1874
- Acquisition information
- Donated: 1884
- Materials and processes
- Material Wood Plant, Material Plant Fibre, Process Bound, Process Carved, Process Decorated
- Dimensions
- Diameter: max 16 mm mouth hole, Width: max 26 mm, Length: max 227 mm
- Object numbers
- Accession number: 1884.112.8 PR Cat other PR nos: 2968
- Research and responses
Studied by Alistair Fraser (http://www.maoriart.org.nz/al-fraser-p-567.html musician) on the 29 April 2015. He made the following observations: Putorino 227 mm long. Material wood - heart matai perhaps - very heavy for its small size. Proximal outer has "bell" like profile. Central mangai 18 mm x 8 mm. Distal hole 1.5 mm diameter. Distal bidning fibre - teisted muka (phormium tenax) 29 mm long. Proximal binding - kiekie root (aerial vine split). Pakati pattern on rear behind central mangai 2 lines around central mangai. Scraping marks on exterior surface. [FB 01/05/2015]
In 1978, David Simmons recorded the holdings of Māori material in a number of museums in Europe and North America including, in May 1978, the Pitt Rivers Museum. (For copies of his notes and related correspondence, see RDF: Researchers: Simmons.) In 1996, Simmons put together the ‘draft catalogues’ he had prepared, depositing copies in, at least, the National Library of New Zealand / Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa and the British Museum. The ‘draft catalogue’ of the Māori material in the PRM, which includes photocopies of some of the relevant catalogue index cards and annotations supplied by PRM assistant curator Lynne Williamson in 1982, was included in ‘Draft Catalogues of Maori Material in English Museums II. Prepared by David Simmons from records made in 1978… Compiled in Auckland in 1996’. It is now widely accepted that Simmons’s assertions about the provenance and history of individual Māori objects are not to be trusted without further evidence and/or documentation. Nevertheless, as the entries in this document have been referred in the literature, in July 2016 I obtained from the British Museum scans of the pages devoted to the PRM’s collections (numbered by hand as pages 43 to 62), printing out a copy for the RDF. For the entry for this object, see page 53 (page 9 of Simmons's original list). [JC 28 7 2016]
Search terms: Music, Musical Instrument, Trumpet