TREASURE TROVE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 72, Issue 287, 3 December 1929, Page 2

TREASURE TROVE

Youthful New Zealand may be, and the years since the river Wanganui knew no larger craft than Maori canoes a mere drop in the bucket of the centuries: but we’re not altogther without a background, and here and there, just when you least expect it, gleam out the rose and gold of faded tapestries belonging to a world peopled by stately ghosts. For instance, when you’re asked to play bridge, one evening, you go prepared for comfort, and for a cheery little fire whose dance will beguile you when you should be thinking about what is, and whose are. trumps: and for an armchair deep enough for you to hide your Lead when you have done the wrong thing entirely with your partner’s trick. But you certainly don’t expect to find, in an old house whose windows and balconies look down on silver river and sky, odd little blue tea-cad-dies and boxes whose designs of quaint cherry-blossom ladies have the gay perfection of Battersea enamel. You are quite prepared to love them for their shapes, and for the delicate colouring of their cherry-flowers, and the look their tiny ladies possess of having been for a very long time the neat presiding deities of the home. Then you are told that they are something which collectors talk about with reverence, and wonder whether New Zealand is such a hopelessly new country at all. The big room is crowded with treasure trove. If your taste isn’t for blue and pink enamel, then perhaps you may be interested in an earthenware jug, which can trace back its descent from one generation unto another for two hundred and fifty years, and then loses track of its own past in the mists of time. Age, by itself, isn’t everything, though we pay respect to centenarians who have done nothing very clever but dodge -death for a hundred years. But this jug is beautiful. It’s large—perhaps cool, old Italian wine slept in it for awhile, thoroughly in keeping with the vine leaves which adorn its sides. And beneath the vine-leaves play the fattest and most attractive cupids that you have ever seen—one a dreamy child, and one full of mischief and malice aforethought. They remind one of the infant cherubs in early Italian paintings, when it was perfectly fit and proper for children to be plump and’ dimpled creatures. Thank goodness that, anyhow, we’ll never be very futuristic when it comes to painting chldren. We can stand for a painting of a woman which consists of a straight line and four or live cubes thrown on in the wrong places, but the mind turns a somersault at the idea of a cubist baby. There is the oddly-shaped china teapot which was horn under a lucky star over a hundred and fifty years ago. The careful Angers who painted it must have been old, for there is tenderness, combined with the warmth of colour, which does not belong to extreme youth. The Angers were perishable, and, in the ordinary course of events, a score or so of years would have seen an end to the teapot’s gallant life of pouring out dishes of the best China for periwigged Georgians. But the lucky star took charge of things, saying: “Housemaid, gently bear the,

Cat nor child come near thee. . . ” and all was well. If one could hear just a tenth of the wit, and the lovemaking. and the confidences, to which this old teapot has listened, one would write a book which would make the modern age look very carefully in the mirror of its vanity case, to see what was wrong with itself. All these treasures are not without their lovely setting. There is a French cabinet, a very tall and dark of wood, polished so that a mirror would be almost an insult to its gleaming surface. And inlaid in ivory is a pattern of those strange people who were only half invisible to the medieval world—a nymph, whose costume and figure would set the designers crazy after a new style, and satyrs which, no doubt, used to lend their company in the twilight to the vine-growers of ancient France. This, age has achieved a great deal of solemn and stately beauty, and more that has clever or elfin fascination. Some say that we blaze new trails ti “the shining tablelands” of Art. But I.think we must still pay courteous homage to the perfection won by those old craftsmen of the past.

DOWN PETTICOAT LANE.

There are great tales concerning the jungle beasties which are to be used in connection with the pantomime, “Cinderella,” to be produced by Mr and Airs J. AV. Bailey on behalf of the Little Theatre Society this month. Besides the nest of real, live and tricky white mice, there are elephants giraffes and goodness knows what else —a glimpse of the Animal Kingdom which any small person would enjoy. The pantomime, with its graceful old gowns and gay comedy, should fit in -well with the fairy-tale spirit of Christmas time. The Spinning Wheel. I sec that a Danish spinning whee* has been brought out to New Zealand, and, in Auckland, is to be put to the purpose of spinning angora wool One , of the Auckland papers published the wheel’s portrait, and a quaint sort of affair it looked. Spinning wheels, of the old school, dating right back to the 1 time when women really did stop at home and earn a little jam for the daily bread and butter, are rare, but far from non-existent, in New Zealand A few years ago, a college gave a little French play version of the old tale of the Sleeping Princess, who pricks her Anger on the bobbin of a spinning wheel, and drops off into a nap J()i) years long Nobody seemed to know how the spinning wheel was to be ac- I quired—but grandmothers and great- , aunts were constructed, and no less | than six old wooden wheels, each witli 1 a record of honest work behind it. whirred pleasantly on the night : of the performance. They were the hit of the play. English Lecturers. * A very interesting visitor to this land is Miss Alargery Perham, lecturer on Colonial history at St. Hugh’s College, Oxford, who is studying educational methods and tribal life among the Alaoris. Aliss Perham is holder of the Rhodes Travelling Fellowship, which is distinct from the Rhodes Scholarship, but enables its holder to glean information in a world very far from England. It’s rather a compliment to New Zealand, and certainty a recognition of the interest of the Maori race, that Aliss Perham should have been sent to this country. Incidentally, tho only woman lecturer at a famous English college that I’ve ever met would completely upset preconceived notions of grave ar.d venerable professors, with long white beards and hardening of the arteries. Aliss Winifred Haward, whoso subject W'as history, college Bedford, and who came out by teachers’ exchange to Canterbury College last year, was both i young and charming, and enjoyed every minute of her stay in New Zealand, | where she learned to drive a car by tho simple means of getting into one and I trying. I Offerings to Tane The ancient godsAsf the Maori world, whose kingdom was one of “green days in forests and blue days at sea,” still have their meed of worship now and again. At the opening of the Hauraki tribal house, “Hotonui,” in the Auckland War Memorial Alusouni. an important and picturesque part of the ceremony was the conciliation of Tane Alahuta, god of the wildwoods, whose trees had been felled for the building of the house, and who must therefore be propitiated with incantations and offerings before all could be well. A Ano old Maori tohunga, Tutanekai Taua, a lineal descendant of that very Tutanekai for whom Hincmoa made her midnight swim across Lake Rotorua, carried out the offices of propitiation, and there is no doubt that the heart of Tane will be friendly towards this Alaori house in a pakcha dwelling. In “Hotonui’’ arc to be deposited Maori heirlooms and treasures of art, remaining still the property of their tribal owners, but a glory to the white man’s museum. Air Hay Campbell’s Exhibition. This month is to be a most interesting one from the artistic point of view. Aliss Winifred Guy’s poster exhibition has been something quite unique, and immediately after she vacates the Gallery (which will be some time this week) Air Hay Campbell will prepare his exhibition of over 80 paintings. The exhibition should start at the end of this week and, as Air Hay Campbell’s gift has found inspiration in many fascinating corners of the world, his pictures will bo something which art-lovers in Wanganui will view with great interest. Air Hay Campbell’s talent is a versatile one, and whether some charming portrait study, a misty glimpse of an old town in Cornwall, or the striking simplicity of some dignified Arab is wliat appeals to one’s particular taste, he has splendid material to offer.