HISTORIC TIMBER

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 105, 30 October 1942, Page 4

HISTORIC TIMBER

PRESIDENTIAL CHAIR

Thh'teen pieces of historic timber linked with early New Zealand have been made into a handsome presidential chair for the New Zealand Founders' Society, presented to it by Mr. Dudley Tripe. The samples were collected over a period of eighteen months by Mr. A. J. Seed, of Wellington, whose work was greatly helped by the co-operation he found.in many parts of the country. The first sample is a piece of1 kauri taken from a block beneath the stone doorstep of the first European house in New Zealand, built at Kerikeri, North Auckland, in 1815. The second was part of the second bridge put across the Balclutha River, Otago, in 1880. A piece of Australian hardwood is the third specimen, and came from a log retrieved from the cargo of the brig Boyd, burned and sunk .by the Maoris in 1809 in Whangaroa Harbour. A gatepost erected at the Church of England mission property at Tauranga in 1938 provided the fourth sample, which was sent forward by a relative of the founder of the mission house.

Early and painstaking craftsmanshiplies behind the fifth sample, a piece of matai sent by 94-year-old Mr. W. B. Allen, of the-Wairarapa. It was part of a chest of drawers made in the Wairarapa 70 years ago by Mr. Edwin Ticehurst. The wood in the chest was hand-hewn from the log and then hand-dressed down to the required thinness.

Kauri from a military blockhouse built near'the mouth of the Waitara River, Taranaki, in 1860, is the sixth sample, and the seventh goes back to early education. It is a piece of kauri taken from the oldest existing building in Nelson, now a part of the art gallery. Formerly it was known as Campbell's School, the foundationstone of which was laid by Sir William Fox on February 14, 1843. WOOD FROM MAORI HOUSE. The Maori element enters into the chair from a sample of totara sent down from Rotorua by Mr. H. Tai Mitchell. It was off one of the three main carved pillars which supported the solid ridge of the meeting-house of the Arawa confederation of tribes, the tree itself being felled in 1866.

Part of the red beech weatherboard of a building erected in Lawrence, Otago, in 1867 and recently dismantled, is the ninth specimen. Probably the most interesting of the collection is some Honduras mahogany from a paychest of! H.M.S. Orpheus, wrecked on the Manukau Bar in 1863. A brass plate on the chest bore the date 1720. One of the largest English oaks still growing in New Zealand (planted at Tamahere, Hamilton, in 1864, and now twelve feet thick at the butt) is represented in the chair as the eleventh ■ specimen. The twelfth is matai from St. John's Anglican Church, Te Awamutu, built from money raised in 1853, and the last sample was part of a tenfoot pointed picket post from the stockade of the five-acre Tutakomoana Pa Fort, used by the Maori inhabitants of the Taupo district up to 1830.

The chair was presented to the society by Mr. Tripe at the annual meeting last evening. Flight Lieutenant C. W. D. Bell presided, and was reelected president.

One of the Arikis of Rarotonga, Makea nui Takau (Mrs. T. Love), has left the island for New Zealand in connection with the affairs of her husband, the late Lieutenant-Colonel T. Love, Commander of the New Zealand Maori Battalion, who was killed in action in Egypt,, states the Rarotonga Press- Association, correspondent, .