Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Museum Stories


I took these two photographs in Auckland Museum last year. I was taken not only with the beauty of the carving but also the story behind how they came to be there. The boards were created in the late 18th century by the Te Whanau-a-Apanui people of the eastern Bay of Plenty (East Cape) at Maraenui, near Te Kaha. The museum exhibit shows the central barge boards (maihi) and doorway (kuwaha) of a pataka (storehouse), which was dismantled in the early 1820s and moved to Raukokere, where new carvings were begun. Before they were completed they were hidden in a cave at Te Kaha to protect them from the 1823 raids by the Northland Ngapuhi tribe. They were recovered from the cave in the 1890s and bought by the Auckland Museum in 1912. I have featured the Maraenui Marae, Te Kaha and Raukokere on this blog previously. Just click on any of the names in the label line below this post to take you to photographs of each of them.

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