1932.27.3

Collection type

Object

Description

Cloak of fine wool and kiwi feathers.

Long description

Unfinished korowai whakahekeheke, a dress cloak with vertical bands of decoration. Kaupapa (body of the cloak) of wool yarn whenu (warp) and silk aho (weft). Alternating vertical bands of black hukahuka and kiwi feathers cover the kaupapa. Borders on either side, and at the finished edge, incorporate feathers and and black dyed hukahuka (tags) of wool. A narrow woven wool border is also located at the finished edge. There is a loop of muka (muka (New Zealand flax; Phormium tenax).on each side which may have been used to attached the cloak to a stand for weaving. There is colour variation in the black dyed elements.

Geographical reference

New Zealand

Oceania > Australia and New Zealand > New Zealand

Cultural groups

Te Arawa

Person

Field collector Mākereti Papakura (Margaret Pattison Staples-Browne)

PRM source William Francis Dennan

Date / Period

Date made: 1925?, uncertain

Date collected

? circa 1925

Acquisition information

Donated: 1932

Materials and processes

Material Wool Yarn Animal, Material Bird Feather, Material Flax (NZ) Plant, Process Twisted, Process Twined Woven, Process Finger Woven, Process Dyed, Material Silk Yarn Animal

Dimensions

Length: max 1300 mm, Width: max 1200 mm

Object numbers

Accession number: 1932.27.3

Research and responses

For general information, see The Old-Time Maori (by Makereti sometime Chieftainess of the Arawa Tribe, known in New Zealand as Maggie Papakura; collected and edited with a biography by T. K. Penniman), London: Victor Gollancz, 1938. [JC 15 5 1996]

See also ‘Makereti’, by Hélène La Rue, in Collectors: Collecting for the Pitt Rivers Museum, ed. Alison Petch (Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, no date [1996]), pp. 31-35. [JC 11 6 1997]

This cloak was viewed by Hokimate Harwood for her doctoral thesis 'Te Reo o Te Kākahu: an ethno-ornithological chronicle of the history and language of Māori feather cloaks' (2022). It is one of 17 feather cloaks in the PRM featured in the international register of Māori feather cloaks produced for her thesis. In this she identifies the cloak as a Korowai Whakahekeheke and gives the following description:

'Unfinished wool (?) and flax korowai with whakahekeheke (vertical bands) of hukahuka tags and kiwi feathers. Wool in borders. W 130cm x H 120cm (max)'. [See Researchers RDF file]

Associated publications

For a discussion of the circumstances in which some of the objects that once belonged to Makereti were acquired by the Museum, see ‘Makereti and the Pitt Rivers Museum, 1921–1930, and Beyond’, by Ngahuia te Awekotuku and Jeremy Coote, in Pacific Presences 2: Oceanic Art and European Museums (Pacific Presences series, 4b), edited by Lucie Carreau, Alison Clark, Alana Jelinek, Erna Lilje, and Nicholas Thomas (Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2018), pp. 277–95, 460–63. This object is referred to on page 288: 'Two years later [i.e. in 1932] he [Makereti's son Te Aonui] gave the PRM three unfinished cloaks (132.27.1-.3).' (Printout of article in RDF: Biographies: Makereti.) [JC 4 1 2019]

Search terms: Clothing, Textile, Cloak