Big bold vessels in fine form

Press, 28 June 1983, Page 16

Big bold vessels in fine form

If you admire tmngs on the grand scale but do not have sufficient space to gether them up in your own home do try to visit the Canterbury Museum some time during the next few weeks. A special exhibition of such outsize objects has been set up in the Visitors’ Lounge. Ralph Riccalton, head of display at the museum, has called it “Capacious Containers.” He explains that nearly all these large exhibits were originally made for practical purposes. They include items made from substances varying from baked clay to fine porcelain, silver and glass with dates of origin from 700 B.C. to the present. Most would be far too large to house in one’s own home, and are almost too large to find a permanent display spot in the museum. This is why they have been gathered together in the lounge for a time so that all who wish may enjoy seeing them. The earliest is a large amphora of baked clay of the type which could not be stood on a flat surface, but had a pointed base for planting it firmly in sand or earth to stand it upright. It was made in Lombardy in 700 8.C., and was acquired for the Canterbury Museum in 1874 by Julius von Haast. He negotiated an exchange with Professor Parteton of the Florence Museum, the goods exchanged being moa bones, bird skins, and Canterbury alpine plants. It was with currency such as this that Von Haast built up most of the museum’s early collections. Unfortunately, we cannot do this today. Our birds are far too precious to sacrifice and are, quite justly, protected by law. Moa bones, too, are protected by legislation, and must remain here for preservation and study. Another large, undecorated object from a very different era is a marble mortar from about 1900. About eight inches high and 14 in diameter it was used for many years in the dispensary of the well known Christchurch etablishment, Barnett’s Chemist

Shop. Made at an earlier date, but probably used by the same generations of Canterbury people who patronied Barnetts, is an earthenware meat dish with under-glaze blue decoration, depicting a girl at what was probably the village pump. It has a wide floral border and was made in 1810. The early days of our province coincided with an age when international exhibitions were very popular. Manufacturers of all kinds of goods made special efforts to produce spectacular exhibition pieces, some of which were procured for the Canterbury Museum during Von Haast’s frequent trips to Australia for such events. One such exhibition piece is a massive vase in tur-

Collecting with Myrtle Duff

quoise opalescent glass decorated with gilt and enamel, made in Austria in 1900. I am not sure if he bought the Satsuma vases illustrated from an international exhibition, but they are large enough and of sufficiently striking appearance to have appeared in one. Standing about four feet high they are decorated all over with Japanese interior domestic scenes in fine detail, surrounded by outside views of countryside, birds, and animals.

A tobacco jar in the tinglazed earthenware usually known as Dutch Delft makes me a little wistful for the days when smoking was still socially acceptable. It would be nice to watch a man relaxed and filling his pipe from such a container in preparation for a quiet smoke. Not all Haast’s acquisitions were bought, or even bartered for. He seems to have been quite successful in adding to his collections in many ways.

One large porcelain vase in neo-classical form with Etruscan-style decoration was presented to the museum by the French government in 1877. The exhibits come from many parts of the world: from Bombay, a glazed jar with human figures dancing among flowers, the design in pink, blue, and green on a dark brown background being quite distinct from European decorative patterns; from China, a porcelain vase of Baluster shape made in the eighteenth century, which I consider the most beautiful of all. It stands three feet high, with indigo blue glaze and no decoration. Another eastern example is a Moorish, lidded vase of Indo-Persian style made in Morocco in 1880. Polynesia is well represented by a nineteenth century pottery bowl from Fiji, a large wooden kava bowl from Western Samoa and, from our Maori past, a pumice container from the Nelson/Marlborough area. It is about 14 inches high, with a fitted lid. A Maori gourd container in a sling of braided flax comes from Taranaki, and from the eastern centre of the North Island, a most intriguing food-bucket made from folded totara bark. This last item was used for the preservation and storage of birds cooked in their own fat, these being a most important protein food in those days. Among the really giantsized “capacious containers” is an immense wooden food bowl from the Solomon Islands, carved from a single piece of wood in 1905 and decorated with shell inlay; a wooden ’umete from Samoa, and a replica of an unusually large stone bowl, once part of the equipment of the sacred “national” Marae of Tapu tapu atea in Rai’iatea in the Society Island Group. This was carried off by Spanish missionaries in 1775. For a long time it was unknown to scholars until somebody translated an account written long ago in Spanish. It was then re-

discovered in Madrid. The replica exhibited was commissioned by the Canterbury Museum in 1979. There are punch bowls, fruit bowls, loving cups. Delft chargers and Malolica platters which, although large, might also be reasonably housed in a private collection. From Madras there is a silver punch bowl with a band of repousse decoration featuring twelve Hindu dieties, all mounted on birds and beasts. Another punch bowl of glass stands on a matching tray with its own ladle and little glass cups hanging all around it. Flashed with blue and with etched decoration, it was my favourite exhibit in the whole museum during our childhood visits. I have never discovered just why it held such an appeal, but I used to stand entranced before it while my brothers wandered off to savour the delights of skeletons and bits and pieces of old aeroplanes. I still admire it and am pleased to see it once again in a place of honour. It was made in Bohemia in 1880. It is not possible to describe every container, but the most recent examples deserve mention: a stoneware pot, ash-glazed by Shugo Takauchi, made in 1980, and part of the great Kurozumi-Kyo collection presented to Canterbury Museum, and a large, threehandled jug, made in 1980 by Yvonne Rust. Such ancient, rare, large objects as many in this collection may not be easily found around Christchurch. But if you would really like to brighten some odd nook or corner in your home with a reasonably large object, pleasing to the eye, remember the fine earthenware jars which were commercially made here quite early in the history of our province, and the gleam of polished brass preserving pans which in their day produced hundreds of rows of jars of delicious jam. Truly capacious containers, these are well worth collecting.