item details
Overview
A lime gourd
This is a lime gourd attributed to the Trobriand Islands of Papua New Guinea. It is made from a hollowed out gourd that is capped with a circular plug. A pig tusk protrudes from the plug and is decorated with five short strings of coloured beads and pieces of pearl shell. A wide band of incised and painted patterning runs around the midsection of the gourd.
A Nurse in the Pacific
This gourd was collected by Wendy Smith a nurse who worked for the Red Cross movement both in New Zealand and overseas for about 21 years. She began working in the Pacific region in 1979, and was in Tonga when Tropical Cyclone Isaac devastated the Ha'apai group of islands in 1982. The cyclone, killed six people, and left 45,000 homeless. Wendy along with her colleagues offered several hundred family packages to those devastated by the cyclone.
Acquisition history
This item is part of a small collection, many of them gifts, that are associated with Wendy's career and highlight stories about New Zealanders and their work in the Pacific. They are also examples of the types of objects Pacific people chose to make and give to overseas visitors in the 1970s and 80s. Wendy gifted this collection to Te Papa in 2010.