MODERN ANTIQUITIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 210, 5 September 1925, Page 11

MODERN ANTIQUITIES.

1 » . QUEER TRADE IN CURIOS. MADE FOR TOURIST DEMAND. TRAPS FOR THE GULLIBLE. People quite cheerfully purchase priceless penis from half-naked natives who come aboard at Colombo, or rare coins of immense antiquity from the shrieking, grimy little Arab brats that dodge round tlte leps of the tourist's donkey or camel at the Gizeh Pyramids. It is part of the. pantomime at Colombo for the poor but wily Cingalce to stealthily approach some likely-looking passenger new to the glamour of the East, with which he has nothing in common except his superb greenness. Taking a dirty bit of paper from the dirtier folds of his waist-cloth the dweller among the spicy breezes we all' learned about when young, will motion the Occidental to some less public part of the deck, and then furtively produce a glittering diamond, white sapphire, or what not, and in broken English very skilfully construct the impression that the thing wa3 not quite honestly obtained, that he needs the money desperately, and nothing else would have persuaded him to let the tourist (addressed as "Mr. Balfour," "Sir Henry Irving," if a man, or "Lily Langtry," or "Gladys Cooper" if a woman) have.the stone for such a miserable sum as £8. If you be hard up for diversion you bargain, and marvel at the perfectly obliging manner in which the itinerant diamond merchant will probably end up by abating £7 19/4 of his price. It is perhaps unnecessary to explain that these glorious stones come from the gem pits of Birmingham, which also turns out much of the skilfully simulated early Roman and Greek coinage, "green with the age of centuries," which one picks up from the raucous antiquaries at tfts foot of the pyramids. Here in New Zealand we have a little business of our own, but owing to the difficulty of imitating the beautiful work of the Maori the trade is not an extensive one. Still, more than one innocent tourist has taken back to the Old Country a greenstone tiki or a carved patu which would excite the mirth of even one of our modern Maoris, who have halfforgotten their musical language and refuse to speak anything but English. One Pakeha, who has not been gathered to his fathers, used to make a lot of money out of bone tikis with red-sealing wax or pawa shell eyes. They were charmingly brown stained as though they had been through thousands of hands and hung round generation after generation of dusky necks. As a matter of fact one of the duties of an apprentice was to bring from his home the shin or other bone from the family joint, and under the magic cutting wheel of the artist the remains of tlie family meal rapidly took on the. peculiar features of the hideous lucky-charm of the Maoris. Attached to a piece of string, a bundle of them hung up in the kitchen chimney gradually took on tlie characteristic brown stain that is the hall-mark of at least live generations of tribal ownership, The fabrication of these century-old heirlooms would take anything from a week to ten days. Displayed judiciously a few at a time in the shop "indow, they never failed to prove too tempting a bait for the passing tourist. Another Pakeha connoisseur flew higher,, and went; in fqr counterfeiting the greenstone tiki itself, which was to" the Maori what the family diamonds, are, to the white man. It is an extremely hard, jade-like stone, and even the most skilfully-worked specimens of European make lacked that indefinable something that distinguishes the real old Maori article, a sort of green satiny look that can apparently only bo imparted by being worn next the skin forbears and years. This connoisseur, however, Was certainly a most skilful worker. He had all the tricks of the business at his finger ends, and could even j give a very tolerable imitation j of the peculiarly characteristic hole by which the tiki or ear-pendant is suspended—tho said hole never going I straight through from side to side as j in the case of a hole made by a Euro- | pean drill. He was so very clever I that he would even venture to try and trade off a specimen or two with a well-known museum curator, who, however, was too old a hand at the game, and always scored off the fabricator. This particular person had very clever ways of getting rid of his goods. Knowing that if he approached certain people direct he would have no success, for among the cognoscenti he and his methods were well-known, so he used to have scouts out, and work off .his goods through them. He has been known 'to walk up and down Queen Street for hours and days on the look out for a certain man who was known to be in need of a good tiki. The dealer would skilfully stalk his prey, spot him, and then turning round would walk past him hi a hurry, throwing a "Good day Jones," as he did so. "Oh, by the way," said the intended victim, "have you picked up anything good lately '!" "Well, I'm in a great hurry old man, just now, but as a matter of fact I did pick up a very fine tiki the other day, though I'm afraid it is too high, for you." Jones, of course, became all the more keen to see the tiki, and at last the dealer would be persuaded to pull it out of his pocket,.-still protesting that he must hurry off. To make a long story short, Jones paid £5 for the tiki, which wasn't more than six weeks old, and had never been handled by anyone but the maker. ' He, of course, was an exceptionally clever fellow, and quite an artist in his way—though it was a pity he did not divert his talent into some more legitimate channel.