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1886.1.1128

Korowai, cloak of muka (New Zealand flax; Phormium tenax) covered entirely with undyed hukahuka (tags).

1886.1.1128

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Collection type
Object
Description
Korowai, cloak of muka (New Zealand flax; Phormium tenax) covered entirely with undyed hukahuka (tags).
Long description
Korowai woven from undyed muka (processed New Zealand flax; Phormium Tenax), with undyed tags (hukahuka) of 2 ply muka cord, thin rolled tags, and possibly other plant fibre tags.
Cultural groups
Māori
Date / Period
Date made: Before 1886
Date collected
By 1886
Acquisition information
Transferred: 10/02/1886
Materials and processes
Material Flax (NZ) Plant, Material Plant Fibre, Process Finger Woven, Process Twined Woven, Process Twisted
Dimensions
Length: max 1000 mm, Width: max 1280 mm
Object numbers
Accession number: 1886.1.1128
Research and responses

This cloak was once thought to be part of the collection of objects obtained in the South Pacific by the Forsters during James Cook's second voyage and subsequently presented to the University of Oxford (Ashmolean Museum) and transferred to the PRM in 1886. Peter Gathercole examined the object (16/4/97) and stated that there is no clear way to determine whether this piece is "Cook" or not, and therefore should NOT be considered part of the Cook/Forster collection. [NM 17/4/97]

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 47 (page 4 on Simmons's original list). [JC 28 7 2016]

Search terms: Clothing, Textile, Cloak

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