Valuable darts board

Press, 29 September 1979, Page 6

Valuable darts board

NZPA London A rare Maori artefact, once used as a dartboard and bought to be built into a fireplace, will be sold by a leading London auction house next month.

The finely carved wood door panel from a pataka, or food store, is expected to fetch up to $26,000 when it is auctioned by Christies on October 16. Twenty years ago it was bought for the equivalent of $lO.BO by a Lancashire builder who noticed it in a garage. Since then it has lain in an attic.

Its value was realised only when a picture of it was sent to Christies in a belated attempt by the owners to discover what it was and where it came from.

Mabie Kirby, whose husband. Raymond, is selling the pataka front, told

the NZPA from her home in the tiny Lancashire village of Inscip that they had been unaware of what the cart ing was.

“I remember we answered an al in the local paper for a firescreen.” she said. “We went to look at it and my husband saw this carving lying in a corner. He took a liking to it and bought it from the old lady who was selling up and moving house.”

Mr Kirby had planned initially to huild the 107 cm-high door, surmounted by a figure, into a fireplace, but it was not used. In the intervening years it collected dust in the family attic, had darts thrown at it by the children. and was generally neglected until earlier this year.

The pataka door is regarded by Christies as a rare find. A tribal art expert, Mr Peter Arbuthnot, told NZPA: “I have never seen another like it being offered for sale here.”

The carving is not in the same league as the extremely valuable set of panels from the rear of a pataka whose ownership, claimed by a Bolivian millionaire collector, Mr George Ortiz, is being challenged by the New Zealand Government.

But the pre-European carving is regarded as a “very fine” example of its type. The sale also includes an eighteenth century canoe prow which is estimated to fetch between $ll,OOO ar-' $17,000, a 14.5 cm tiki, and a rare Cook Islands staff god which Christies expects to sell for up to $87,000.