Historic figurine to be returned

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32958, 3 July 1972, Page 6

Historic figurine to be returned

(N.Z. Press Association)

HAMILTON, July 2.

The de Thierry shepherdess is to come home.

A beautiful marble figurine, the shepherdess once belonged to King Louis XVI of France. It was given by King Charles X of France to the wife of his godson, Baron Charles de Thierry de Laville, early last century. A treasured heirloom, the figurine came to New Zealand with Baron de Thierry and his family in 1839. When the baron died in 1864, the shepherdess passed to his eldest son. Since then, the figurine has traditionally passed to the descendant to whom the baron’s title would have passed had the family cared to use it.

Though he has not adopted the title, the present baron is a Pirongia sheepfarmer, Mr H. R. (Boy) de Thierry. His wife, a niece of the president of the New Zealand Maori Council, Dr Pei Jones, says her 6ft husband is a “down to earth farmer” who loves farm life.

“He’s quite happy to help anybody interested in history and such, if he can, but his favourite subject is farming.”

However, there are features of the de Thierry’s history which almost anybody would be intrigued by. For example there was a well established family claim in France to a fortune of millions of dollars, which has never been recovered, though in 1931 a tribunal admitted the justice of the claim.

The fortune was seized by Napoleon in 1797. Though such spectacular and genuine matters might excite some people, Mr de Thierry accepts them all with a shrug, a smile, and turns back to talk of sheep and cattle.

The shepherdess has been in the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington. It was lent to the library about 15 years ago by Mr de Thierry's father, the late Mr Charles de Thierry, of Pirongia. Mr de Thierry senior died in 1960, not long after he lent the shepherdess to the library.

Now the de Thierrys have decided to bring the shepherdess home.

Though he agrees he is keen to recover the historic heirloom, Mr de Thierry says he has not taken a great interest in other details of the family’s history.