Publisher description

Weaving is more than just a product of manual skills. From the simple rourou (food basket) to the prestigious kahukiwi (kiwi feather cloak), weaving is endowed with the very essence of the spiritual values of M ori people. The first M ori settlers brought the knowledge of weaving with them. In Aotearoa they found new plant materials, including the versatile harakeke (New Zealand flax). They also incorporated feathers from birds and the skin and hair of their dogs. They wove practical items necessary for everyday life. But they also wove exceptional items such as fine mats and wall panels and, above all, kakahu (cloaks) of immense significance, which bestow mana (prestige) on both weaver and wearer. This major new publication opens the storeroom doors of the Te Papa Tongarewa M ori collections, illuminating the magnificent kakahu in those collections and the art and tradition of weaving itself. Five informative chapters, each written by an expert contributor, reveal the history and significance of weaving, every page sumptuously illustrated with detailed, all-new photographs by Te Papa photographer Norm Heke. In addition, forty rare and precious kakahu are featured specially within this book, with glossy colour detail illustrations of each, plus historical and contextual images and graphic diagrams of weaving techniques. These are accompanied by engaging descriptions bringing together information on every cloak its age, materials, and weaving technique with quotes from master weavers and other experts, stories of the cloaks, details of their often remarkable provenance. A full glossary, illustrated guide to cloak types, and index are included.

This volume explores the conservation and presentation of dress in museums and beyond as a complex, collaborative process. Recognizing this process as a dynamic interaction of investigation, interpretation, intervention, re-creation, and display, Refashioning and Redress: Conserving and Displaying Dress examines the ways in which these seemingly static exhibitions of “costume” or “fashion” are actively engaged in cultural production. The seventeen case studies included here reflect a broad range of practice and are presented by conservators, curators, makers, and researchers from around the world, exposing changing approaches and actions at different times and in different places. Ranging from the practical to the conceptual, these contributions demonstrate the material, social, and philosophical interactions inherent in the conservation and display of dress and draw upon diverse disciplines ranging from dress history to social history, material cultural studies to fashion studies, and conservation to museology. Case studies include fashion as spectacle in the museum, dress as political and personal memorialization, and theatrical dress, as well as dress from living indigenous cultures, dress in fragments, and dress online.

Galleries of Maoriland introduces us to the many ways in which European colonists to New Zealand discovered, created, propagated, and romanticised the Maori world summed up in a popular nickname describing New Zealand; Maoriland. But Blackley shows that Maori were not merely passive victims: they too had a stake in this process of romanticisation. What, this book asks, were some of the Maori purposes that were served by curio displays, portrait collections, and the wider ethnological culture? Galleries of Maoriland looks at Maori prehistory in European art; the enthusiasm of settlers and Maori for portraiture and recreations of ancient life; the trade in Maori curios; and the international exhibition of this colonial culture. By illuminating New Zealand's artistic and ethnographic economy, this book provides a new understanding of our art and our culture.