Art historian Deidre Brown stands in Canterbury Museum’s collection storage facility looking at a beautiful and ornate Māori carving.
“I can't believe I'm actually looking at it - after 8 years,” she says with a smile.
The kōrupe (door lintel) was thought lost for two centuries, but it was uncovered in the Museum’s collection after a global search by Deidre Brown, who is professor of architecture at Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland. It was one of a group of eight Māori whakairo rākau (traditional wood carvings) she has tracked down to museums across the world.
The taonga (treasures) were purchased in the Bay of Islands by the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in 1823 and shipped to London. Researchers have been trying to find out what happened to the carvings for 60 years.
Deidre says the search was inspired by her whakapapa.
“I'm descended from Rangihoua through my great grandmother's great grandfather Te Pahi.
“I've always been really interested in looking for taonga that might have been from our region, because there really isn't anything identified from Rangihoua.
“So I started looking for the taonga that was sent offshore by the Church Mission Society, which established a mission there in 1814. You could see from their records that they were regularly sending taonga to the Church Missionary Society in London, and specifically for their museum.
“So, I thought: I'll go looking for these CMS collections.”
Her search began with some late-night Googling. She stumbled upon a catalogue for an 1867 exhibition in Paris.
“It just kind of popped up.
“Some of the objects in the exhibition were attributed to the CMS. I thought, my goodness, here they are, and here are pictures of them. Once you have an image of something it is so much easier to find.
“With a bit more googling late at night, I was able to establish that they had been collected by [London collector] William Oldman and some of them had then been sold to museums.
“It was incredible because they all started falling into place. One was in Switzerland and at least 2 or 3 were in Berlin.”
She then tracked down further objects by following a trail of Roman numerals.
“I found that these taonga had been purchased from [nineteenth century soldier] Horatio Robley. Then I noticed in one image there was a Roman numeral carved into one of the items.
“I thought that was very unusual so I took the step of writing to museums to ask if their taonga Māori had Roman numerals on them. That was very bold because it could sound very far fetched. But they looked and they found Roman numerals on them."
She eventually tracked down one carving to Canterbury Museum. Museum Registrar Scott Reeves joined the hunt.
“We had a look in our basement in the old Museum.
“But that space was very cramped. It was dark, dingy and crowded, so it was quite difficult to locate.
“Most of the lights in the basement didn't work. You often had to move boxes and things to even get to some of the shelving areas. In my years at the Museum, there were some areas of the basement that I'd never been into.
“It was only when we’d moved the whole collection out of Rolleston Avenue for the redevelopment that we managed to locate the kōrupe.”
The taonga was wrapped in black plastic and potentially contaminated with lead dust from the old Museum basement. Scott donned safety gear and unwrapped the kōrupe looking for Roman numerals. He found them on the back of the object, partially hidden by a new wooden brace.
In May, Deidre came to Canterbury Museum to get her first glimpse of the taonga it had taken her so long to track down. She said it was amazing these treasured objects had endured.
“This particular taonga Māori has gone to London. Some of the rest of the consignment made its way to Germany. So these incredible taonga from New Zealand were caught up in the theatre of World War Two on different sides.
“We know that William Oldman stayed with his collection in London, and his house was narrowly missed by a German bomb.
“But they managed to survive. There’s a belief that all taonga that are gifted will eventually find their way back, and they accumulate stories and mana through those journeys.”
