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1886.1.1317

Clothes fastener made from whale tooth [JU 21/08/2012]

On display

1886.1.1317

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Collection type
Object
Description
Clothes fastener made from whale tooth [JU 21/08/2012]
Long description
Cloak pin or aurei made from whale tooth [JU 21/08/2012]
Cultural groups
Māori
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 Whale Tooth Animal, Process Carved, Process Perforated
Dimensions
Length: max 115 mm
Object numbers
Accession number: 1886.1.1317 Other numbers: Forster 125
Research and responses

The surface of the pin does not show the porosity and presence of canals that would be expected in bone. It more closely resembles tooth material. [JU 21/08/2012]

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 46 (page 3 on Simmons's original list). [JC 28 7 2016]

Associated publications
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 (Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, no date[1970]). The text from the 'Forster' manuscript is followed by the following notes: '123.,124.,125. bodkins with which they fasten their coats, one of green stone, & two of bone. Lengths: (nephrite) 15.5cm.; (bone) 11.5cm. and 17cm.' Listed under numbers 4-5 under ‘New Zealand...Cloak Pins’ on page 179 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): '14-5. Two bone cloak pins, Oxford (124-125). Lengths 11.5 cm, 17 cm. Evidence: Forster collection. Second voyage. Literature: Gathercole, n.d. (1970) [see above]'. [JP 24/7/2002] 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, Ornament, Clothes Fastener, Pin

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