- Collection type
- Object
- Description
- Cloak. Made of flax. With black pendant strings & borders of wool tufts in green, yellow, red & white (imitating a feather border).
- Long description
- Korowai ngore, dress cloak with black tags and pompoms. The kaupapa is woven from undyed muka (processed New Zealand flax/Phormium Tenax). The kaupapa is covered with hukahuka (black dyed muka tags) and wool pompoms. Wool border on three sides and a smaller border on the top edge. Wool colours include Red, green, yellow, black, blue and white. [ROH 31/01/2012] The weft rows are double pair twinned. [MJD 4/11/2013]
- Cultural groups
- Māori
- Person
- Field collector Charles Smith
- PRM source The Executors of the Charles Smith Estate
- PRM source Alfred T. Collier
- Date / Period
- Date made: Before 1869?, uncertain
- Date collected
- 1860 - 1869?
- Acquisition information
- Purchased: 1923
- Materials and processes
- Material Flax (NZ) Plant, Material String, Material Wool Yarn Animal, Material Earth, Process Finger Woven, Process Twisted, Process Twined Woven, Process Dyed
- Dimensions
- Width: max 2340 mm, Length: max 1600 mm
- Object numbers
- Accession number: 1923.87.160
- Research and responses
According to Hamilton ('Maori Art', Wellington: The New Zealand Institute, 1896, p. 280, 285 & 317), a korowai is a "mat ornamented with black twisted thrums [of fibre]". It is made with fine quality flax beaten out with a stone patu, and is generally worn by females. It is part of the generic group known as Kakahu (fine flax cf. Mai for rough cloaks of inferior material). [CF 15/3/2001]
This cloak was studied by Michelle Horwood, Victoria University of Wellington, on 4 November 2013. She noted cloaks with just pompoms are known as ngore. [MJD 4/11/2013]
1923.87.160
Cloak. Made of flax. With black pendant strings & borders of wool tufts in green, yellow, red & white (imitating a feather border).
1923.87.160
Digital asset copyright: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford
If you wish to order a high-resolution image and/or licence its use for print or web publication, exhibition, film, promotional product or any other use, whether in the academic or commercial sector of any print run, then please visit photographic services.