Rare works set for epic trip
Fragile 200-year-old Ma¯ ori drawings being repaired for shows in Europe
Some of the earliest known Ma¯ori drawings on paper are being painstakingly prepared in Auckland to travel to where they were made around 200 years ago — England.
The drawings were held privately until 1897, when the man who had inherited them gave them to Auckland Library. This was after he read in the Herald about the Ma¯ori chiefs who made them.
The fragile pen-and-ink drawings, by Northlanders Tuai and T¯ıtere, have undergone repairs at the Auckland Central Library and new mounts and a special box have been made.
Some will be displayed at the Royal Academy of Arts in London at an exhibition starting in September to mark the 250th anniversary of Captain James Cook’s departure in August 1768 on the first of his scientific and exploratory voyages to the Pacific Ocean.
Others of the five drawings — which depict kites, weapons, the moko of Tuai’s brother Korokoro, and waka, some bearing human-like characters — will be exhibited in Paris.
Tuai was of the first generation of Ma¯ ori to travel confidently to Europe, say Alison Jones and Kuni Kaa Jenkins in their book on the man they dub “a traveller in two worlds”.
Born around 1797, Tuai would have been in his early 20s when he and T¯ıtere went to Britain in 1818-19, where they were hosted by the Church Missionary Society.
In 1813, Tuai was at Parramatta, New South Wales with the missionary Samuel Marsden, where he taught Ma¯ori language and helped prepare the first book using te reo.
A versatile man, he was a gobetween in Marsden’s efforts to establish a Pa¯keha¯ settlement in the Bay of Islands, a warrior chief on Hongi Hika’s devastating raids of 1821-23, a navigator for Royal Navy ships seeking kauri, and a “prostitution controller” in the bay area.
As potential recruiters of New Zealand souls, Tuai and T¯ıtere were sent to Bible study by the missionaries in London, but they preferred to work on farms, visit factories and perform haka at parties.
They met linguistics professor Samuel Lee to help him write what would become the first book on Ma¯ ori grammar and vocabulary but were both sick and instead drew their nowprecious sketches.
They also dictated letters to an English companion who wrote them on slate for the New Zealanders to copy with pen and paper. Jones says the 19 letters still in existence represent the first written Ma¯ ori expression in English.
The library’s 2018 preservation manager, David Ashman, said the drawings had deteriorated, partly because the highly acidic traditional black ink damaged the paper.
“They have been around for 200 years. Now we’ve got the optimum storage conditions we can reckon they are going to be around another 500 years — or more.”