Wife Of Medbury Headmaster Treasures African Furniture

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27875, 25 January 1956, Page 2

Wife Of Medbury Headmaster Treasures African Furniture

Furniture and ornaments of beauti-fully-grained stinkwood from the Cape Province will be amongst souvenirs of their homeland which Mr P. N. Le Mesurier and Mrs Le Mesurier will arrange in their new home at Medbury School when their furniture arrives from South Africa.

Mr Le Mesurier, who will succeed Mr E. J. Chennells as headmaster of Medbury School, arrived in Christchurch yesterday accompanied by his wife, and their three sons—Timothy, aged eight; Christopher, aged seven; and Nicholas, aged three. Some of their stinkwood souvenirs they acquired on a motoring holiday during a long vacation, when they motored more than 1000 miles. From Capetown, where Mr Le Mesurier was headmaster of the Diocesan College Preparatory School, they motored to George in the lake district of Knysna, then to Natal to visit Mrs Le Mesurier’s parents, and finally to Bloemfontein, in the Free State, where Mrs Le Mesurier was born.

In Knysna they passed through forests of stinkwood, and on the outskirts of the forests beside the main

road were small factories where the stinkwood was made into furniture and ornaments by non-Europeans—-descendants of early Europeans and Africans.

Stinkwood was dark and had a beautiful grain in it, said Mrs Le Mesurier. She understood that it deserved its name before the timber was dressed, but the finished articles had no peculair fragrance, and were very beautiful. Growing amongst the stinkwood in the forests were yellow-

wood trees. Furniture and ornaments of yellow-wood were rare now, and the trees were protected. On their journey Mr and Mrs Le Mesurier passed through part of Zululand, where the Zulus live in round grass huts in wooded and very hilly country. There are no fireplaces in the huts. The Zulus cook out of doors in mud ovens raised above the ground. Some also live in mud huts. The main diet of the Zulus is mealie porridge, made of ground mealies, which is sweet corn. Zulu women did beautiful bead work—a craft handed down to them for generations, said Mrs Le Mesurier. They bought the colourful beads—blue, red. green, black and lots of white —and made them into necklaces, belts, ear-rings, and other ornaments. For special occasions the women wpre chiefly beads and very little else. There were many women’s organisations in Cape Town, said Mrs Le Mesurier, but with a young family she had very little opportunity to belong to them. She was a member of the Ladies’ Guild of the Anglican Church in Cape Town. The guild was the equivalent of the Mothers’ Union in New Zealand. “We have had a wonderful welcome to Christchurch,” said Mrs Le Mesurier. She and her husband left Cape Town by the Dominion Monarch, on New Year's Day and before the school begins on February 6 they hope to see some of Canterbury’s scenery.

Mr and Mrs Chennells will leave Medbury next week, arid will sail for overseas on February 25.