Various articles of Otaheite and New Zealand

item details

NameVarious articles of Otaheite and New Zealand

ProductionJohn Eastgate; engraver (printmaker); circa 1780; London

Classificationprints, engravings, works on paper

Materialspaper, printing ink

Materials Summaryetching and engraving

Techniquesengraving, etching

DimensionsImage: 368mm (width), 211mm (height)

Registration Number1992-0035-2086

Credit lineGift of Mr Wright, 1972

Overview

This engraving pictures a selection of taonga acquired by Captain Cook and crew during their voyages to the Pacific between 1769 and 1784. They were drawn and engraved by John Eastgate, who was charged with documenting many of the taonga held in collections of the Admiralty, as well as creating engravings based on sketches and paintings by the artists on board Cook’s voyages.

This collection of taonga includes a Taumi (gorget) which is likely to be based on that in Te Papa’s collection, acquired on one of Cook’s voyages and given to the Dominion Museum in 1912 (FE000335 https://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/object/155757), as well as a wakahuia, described as a ‘chest of New Zealand’, and very similar to those donated to the Museum by Oldman in the 1950s with a Cook provenance (OL000015, OL000003).

In many of these kinds of composite images, the taonga are arranged with little geographical or cultural logic – there is no ordering of the artefacts according to place or type, and there is no consistent rendering of taonga in relation to their scale. This encourages viewing the artefacts as curiosities, rather than encouraging an understanding of the artefacts and their cultural value.