1923.87.365

Collection type

Object

Description

Canoe baler of dark wood, rounded bottom with curvilinear carving at the heel end. [MJD 06/05/2010]

Long description

Canoe baler of dark wood, rounded bottom with curvilinear carving at the heel end. Carved at the end of the handle is a figure '8' shape. The wood at mouth of the baler is slightly split. [MJD 06/05/2010]

Geographical reference

New Zealand

Oceania > Australia and New Zealand > New Zealand

North Island

Cultural groups

Māori

Person

Field collector Charles Smith

PRM source Mrs Alfred T. Collier

Date / Period

Date made: Before 1908

Date collected

By 1908

Acquisition information

Donated: 1947

Materials and processes

Material Wood Plant, Process Carved, Process Perforated

Dimensions

Height 204 mm, Width: max 343 mm, Length: max 490 mm

Object numbers

Accession number: 1923.87.365

Research and responses

This baler was studied by Michelle Horwood, Victoria University of Wellington, on her research visit 29 October - 22 November 2013. She noted the inside and face carvng had remains of red ochre (Kokowai). [MJD 11/11/2013]

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 probable entry for this object, see page 57 (page 13 of Simmons's original list). [JC 28 7 2016]

Search terms: Navigation, Figure, Canoe Baler