- Museum number
- Oc1964,05.1.a
- Description
-
Feather box or treasure box (papahou) made of wood, haliotis shell.
- Production date
- 18thC(mid)-18thC(late) (?)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 9.40 centimetres
-
Length: 43 centimetres
-
Depth: 9.80 centimetres
- Curator's comments
-
Register 1964
a,b Wood box with lid, rectangular, decorated with anthropomorphic carving in relief.
-
Starzecka, Neich and Pendergrast 2010
238 Plate 66
Treasure box, papahou
1964 oc.5.1. Length 43 cm.
Wooden box: reddish brown, narrow, deep, rectangular, recessed all around for flat lid with two scallops at each end. All surfaces of box and lid carved with fourteen relief wheku-faced figures, of these six clearly female and four male, linked in various types of sexual union. Arched projecting bodies of one figure at each end form suspension lugs. All figures decorated with rauponga and plain spirals, background left plain. Two small insets on lid: one haliotis shell, and one nephrite in vulva of female figure; one nephrite inset in base of box.
Provenance: Presented by Mrs Geoffrey W. Russell.
Register: ‘Believed to have been in England since at least 1900. Formerly in the
possession of a Mrs Mary Pye, whose family had military connections.’
Comments: Bay of Islands; late eighteenth century, very complex composition of figures in unusually explicit variety of sexual connections (RN); eighteenth century (DRS).
- Location
- On display (G1/wp97)
- Exhibition history
-
2019 21 Sep-17 Nov Shire Hall Historic Courthouse Museum, Dorchester, Desire, love, identity: exploring LGBTQ histories
2019 8 Jun-31 Aug Norfolk & Norwich Millennium Library, Desire, love, identity: exploring LGBTQ histories
2019 15 Mar-26 May, Bolton Museum, Desire, love, identity: exploring LGBTQ histories
2018-2019 14 Dec-3 Mar, National Justice Museum, Desire, love, identity: exploring LGBTQ histories
2018 25 Sep– 2 Dec, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Desire, love, identity: exploring LGBTQ histories
1998 27 June-7-1 Nov, London, BM, Maori
- Acquisition date
- 1964
- Acquisition notes
- Register 1964
Believed to have been in England since at least 1900. Formerly in the possession of a Mrs. Mary Pye, whose family had military connections. See correspondence with Dr. E.S. de Beer.
- Department
- Africa, Oceania and the Americas
- Registration number
- Oc1964,05.1.a
