1906.17.1

Collection type

Object

Description

End-blown trumpet/flute, putorino, carved from wood.

Long description

End-blown trumpet/flute, putorino, carved from wood. At the centre is a transverse dumb bell shaped hole. The upper end is open with a bevelled lip, forming the blowing orifice, and is carved in a stylised human head. Near the lower end a stylised human head is carved in relief with haliotis shell eyes. The flute is bound at either end with rattan binding. [FB 23/03/2015]

Geographical reference

New Zealand

Oceania > Australia and New Zealand > New Zealand

Cultural groups

Māori

Person

Field collector General Page

PRM source Henry Martin Gibbs

Date / Period

Date made: Circa by 1848

Date collected

Around 1848

Acquisition information

Donated: 03/1906

Materials and processes

Material Wood Plant, Material Plant Root, Material Haliotis Shell, Process Perforated, Process Hollowed, Process Bound, Process Inlaid

Dimensions

Width: max 45 mm, Length: max 446 mm, Depth: max 16 mm mouth hole, Width: max 19 mm mouth hole

Object numbers

Accession number: 1906.17.1

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 446 mm long 45 mm wide 35 mm deep by mangai top. Kiekie root binding x 4 areas. Burnished underneath more than top. Narrow recess for proximal end binding. Pakati pattern is crude. Wheku at proximate is moved 90 degress from usual position. This design is more commonly found on Koauau. Centre of central mangai at 215 mm from proximal. Distal wenewene 3 mm. Proximal mengai 20 mm x 16 mm [FB 01/05/2015]

In a 'PS' to a letter (about a collection of Peruvian artefacts) to E. B. Tylor, dated 16 April 1900, John E. Gibbs writes: 'I have forgotten to mention that my cousin has also some New Zealand curiosities which he would also be willing to give if they should prove of interest...' (This letter is held in the RDF for PRM 1900.30.) [CF 22/10/2001; JC 13 12 2007]

In a letter to Henry Balfour, dated 3 February 1919, Henry Martin Gibbs writes: '...General Page who as a Lieut. served in the Maori Wars from 1846-1851. You have in the Museum a Maori musical instrument, a sort of flute, which was given me by General Page & whi[ch] he brought back from New Zealand after the Maori wars'. (This letter is held in the RDF for PRM 1919.6.) [CF 13/11/2001; JC 13 12 2007]

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 55 (page 11 of Simmons's original list). [JC 28 7 2016]

Search terms: Music, Musical Instrument, Trumpet, Flute