Flax cloak with dark brown border along one edge.

Collection type: Object
Description: Flax cloak with dark brown border along one edge.
Long description: The body of the cloak (kaupapa) is processed New Zealand flax (muka), in single-pair weft-twining technique (whatu aho patahi), where two weft threads (aho) twine around each other with a half-turn before enclosing the next warp thread (whenu). The weft is horizontal, i.e. the aho run from top to bottom. The whenu warps measure 8 per cm, and the spacing between each aho weft row is between 3 and 4 mm. The lower border of the cloak is 97 mm wide. Within the border there are 6 whenu warp threads per cm. The cloak is shaped with short wefts (aho poka). The first poka is inserted approximately 11.5 cm from the bottom of the cloak, finishing 6.5 cm from one edge, and 14 cm from the other. A second poka is inserted 19 cm from the bottom edge, and ends 2 cm from the side edge. A third poka is inserted 22.5 cm from the bottom edge, ending 14.5 cm from one edge and 9.0 cm from the other. A fourth poka is inserted approximately 35 cm from the bottom edge, ending 6.0 cm from one edge and 7.5 cm from the other. The fifth poka is inserted 42 cm from the bottom edge, ending 4.5 cm from one edge, 6.5 cm from the other. The sixth shaping row is 53.5 cm from the bottom edge of the cloak, ending 33.0 m from one edge and 25.5 cm from the other. A seventh shaping row is inserted 11.0 cm from the top edge, ending 24.0 cm one side edge, extending all the way to the opposite side. (These aho poka correspond with the diagram of the cloak on page 63 of The Maori Mantle, by H. Ling Roth (Halifax: Bankfield Museum, 1923), where it is described as follows: 'No. 11. Fig. 47. Mantle, No. 106, Capt. Cook Collection, Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford. The border along the bottom, 10 cm. deep, is dark brown with small triangles of a lighter brown top and bottom. This border is not a taniko but consists of 84 rows single-paired placed close together, see Fig. 9g [on page 19]. Some of the ends are knotted together here and there at the back. Along the bottom of the border there is a narrow light buff (natural colour) plait. There is no worsted ornamentation. This mantle is a very fine specimen.' See also the detailed sketch published as figure 47 on page 70. See also detailed dimensions in table on page 120.) The border is mainly formed from close-packed single-pair weft-twining. At the top and bottom of the border a second colour, a lighter brown, has been introduced, and, using taniko techniques, a patterned strip has been produced. The commencement of the cloak is at the neck edge, probably by the method described in 'Whatu: The Enclosing Threads', by Margery Blackman (in Whatu Kākahu / Māori Cloaks, edited by Awhina Tamarapa (Wellington: Te Papa Press, 2011), pp. 75-93). On page 88 Blackman writes: 'A third method is very clearly identifiable in a number of eighteenth- and early ninetheenth- century kakahu. A plied thread appears to have been set up between the two turuturu placed at the desired width of the kakahu. A length of whenu is then laid over the cross thread and secured in place with whatu to form two whenu.' The bottom of the cloak is finished with a plait, beyond which the ends of the aho can be seen in a very short fringe. An ornamental two-ply twist of flax fibre has been added at the top edge of the cloak, inserted between the whenu warp threads. The small strips of dog skin, present at top and bottom of the border on the lower part of the cloak, were attached with a two-ply cord of muka, threaded through the kaupapa and looped around the strips of skin. [JU 30/09/2013]
Geographical reference: New Zealand
Oceania > Australia and New Zealand > New Zealand
Cultural groups: Māori
Person: Field collector Johann Reinhold Forster; Field collector Georg Forster; PRM source Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Date / Period: Date made: Before 10/11/1774
Date collected: 1773 or 1774 (between 26 March and 11 May 1773, or between 18 May and 7 June 1773, or between 3 November and 25 December 1773; or between 16 October and 10 November 1774)
Acquisition information: Transferred: 19/04/1886
Materials and processes: Material Flax (NZ) Plant, Material Dog Hair Textile Animal, Process Finger Woven
Dimensions: Width: max 1190 mm, Length: max 1050 mm
Object numbers: Accession number: 1886.1.1133 Other numbers: Forster 106
Research and responses: The whole of the cloth is natural in colour with the exception of the border which is 100 mm wide and appears on one side. The border is of dark brown flax with a zig-zag design in a reddish flax. [NM 20/3/97]
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 a possible entry for this object, see page 45 (page 2 on Simmons's original list). [JC 29 7 2016]
Associated publications: Listed as one of numbers 236-257 on page 185 of A Catalogue of the Ashmolean Museum Descriptive of the Zoological Specimens, Antiquities, Coins, and Miscellaneous Curiosities (Oxford, 1836): 'South Sea Islands, &c.... Specimens of New Zealand matting, and cloths of flax.' [JC 5 7 2010] Listed according to the 'Forster list' numbering system in 'From the Islands of the South Seas 1773–4': An Exhibition of a Collection Made on Capn. Cook’s Second Voyage of Discovery by J. R. Forster—A Short Guide, by Peter Gathercole (Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, no date [1970]): '104-106. Three plain coats of the flax plant, two with dogskin at the corners. Of fine flax. 104 has white strips of dogskin at the corners; 105 has three pairs of thin brown stripes, and 106 has a thick brown border and two strips of dogskin. Widths: 115 cm.; 147 cm.; 119 cm.' [NMM, undated; JC 5 7 2010, 28 8 2015] Listed as No. 11 in 'Appendix: Description of Individual Garments' on page 63 of The Maori Mantle, by H. Ling Roth, Halifax: Bankfield Museum (1923), where it is described as follows: 'No. 11. Fig. 47. Mantle, No. 106, Capt. Cook Collection, Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford. The border along the bottom, 10 cm. deep, is dark brown with small triangles of a lighter brown top and bottom. This border is not a taniko but consists of 84 rows single-paired placed close together, see Fig. 9g [on page 19]. Some of the ends are knotted together here and there at the back. Along the bottom of the border there is a narrow light buff (natural colour) plait. There is no worsted ornamentation. This mantle is a very fine specimen.' See also detailed sketch published as figure 47 on page 70. See also detailed dimensions in table on page 120. [JC 12 3 1999, 5 7 2010] Listed as number 18 under ‘New Zealand...Cloaks’ on page 171 of 'Artificial Curiosities': Being an Exposition of Native Manufactures Collected on the Three Pacific Voyages of Captain James Cook, R.N. at the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, January 18, 1978 - August 31, 1978 on the Occasion of the Bicentennial of the European Discovery of the Hawaiian Islands by Captain Cook - January 18, 1778 (Bernice P. Bishop Museum Special Publication 65), by Adrienne L. Kaeppler (Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 1978): '14-19. Six cloaks, Oxford (102-107). Evidence: Forster collection. Second voyage. Literature: Gathercole, n.d. (1970) [see above]'. [JC 29 5 2000] Published as part of the Forster Collection on a dedicated website at www.prm.ox.ac.uk/forster (from February 2001). [JC 7 7 2005] For an account of the history of the collection of which this is part, see 'The Cook-Voyage Collections at Oxford, 1772–1775', by Jeremy Coote, in Jeremy Coote (ed.), Cook-Voyage Collections of 'Artificial Curiosities' in Britain and Ireland, 1771–2015 (MEG Occasional Paper No. 5), Oxford: Museum Ethnographers Group (2015), pp. 74–122. (Copy in RDF: Researchers: Jeremy Coote (Cook-Voyage Collections).) [JC 9 6 2016]

Search terms: Clothing, Textile, Cloak, Mat