Too valuable and fragile for travel

Press, 10 March 1987, Page 13

Too valuable and fragile for travel

The last two taonga from the Canterbury, Museum collections to be discussed in this series, share, like the Moncks Cave carvings, their uniqueness. Both were selected for the Te Maori exhibition and were not sent — because of their value and, in the case of the wood carving, its extreme fragility. The black stone breast pendant, or “pectoral,” with two fish forms carved in low relief, was found at Okains Bay on Banks Peninsula. It is fashioned from dense black serpentine, a rock found in the Nelson region. It is almost 180 millimetres across, with a circumference which is notched except on the upper, edge, in which three suspension holes are drilled.

Pectorals such as this are almost certainly stone versions of those of the more northerly Pacific Islands, which were made of a pearl shell — a material not available to New Zealand’s Polynesian settlers. The carved fish on this pendant are in themselves fascinat-. ing. The cross-hatching on one of them is rare among New Zealand Maori carvings and the fish themselves, which are detailed and specific in shape, give rise to some interesting questions. They could be tunnies, but tunnies only very rarely come into New Zealand waters, certainly too seldom to be featured on a special pendant. It has been seriously suggested that they are a traditional rend-

ering of bonito, or albacore, which were very important in Eastern Polynesia. If that is true then this pendant certainly relates to the very earliest period of the human occupation of New Zealand. The last of these taonga or treasures has, because of its fragility, rarely been displayed and has only recently been returned from a conservation laboratory. It is a piece of very early South Island wood carving and was found in a swamp near Temuka during ditch-digging operations in 1948. (South Island wod carvings of any age are very rare, and early pieces especially so.) It was initially sent to Dr Oliver at the Dominion (now National) Museum in Wellington for assessment and was subsequently presented to Canterbury Museum as the most appropriate local repository.

At the time of its discovery it was examined by several authorities on Maori carving styles, but none were able to give any definite opinion on it, although all were agreed on its considerable age. The style of carving is quite different from that usually associated with later Maori wood carving which is generally curvilinear. The crescent shape and angular decorative notches are closely akin to some designs in South Island rock art which also belongs to the early period.

One of the most interesting aspects of this piece is that noone is quite sure what its original purpose was. It has been referred to as a house lintel but does not seem to be quite right for that purpose. It does not resemble any other known New Zealand carving in either shape or style.

The final article in this series, “The Past and the Future,” will be published on Friday.