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Overview
This souvenir glass axe was made for the New Zealand and South Seas International Exhibition held in Dunedin from November 1925 to May 1926.
The Dunedin Exhibition was promoted by the Otago Expansion League in response to the population and economic drift north. The exhibition attracted over 3.2 million visitors, more than double New Zealand’s total population at the time. It was laid out over 16 acres with seven pavilions linked by covered walkways, with a grand court of reflecting pools leading to a domed Festival Hall. There was an art gallery, a fernery (with a waterfall and streams), and an amusement area with rides and a ‘fun factory’.
A wide range of souvenirs were made from glass, crystal, ceramic, silverware and textiles. Many were made for practical use such as tableware and accessories.
While this kind of red glass souvenir is very characteristic of the kind of objects available at local and national exhibitions during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it also reflects the absence of a local glass industry and the reliance on an east European glass making tradition. Until the late 19th century, red glass was regarded as highly precious due to the addition of a gold flux. However, Bohemian glass manufacturers were able to mass produce red glass by the addition of copper. As seen in this souvenir axe, this helped create a top layer of red glass, suggesting a preciousness, but also enabling engraving and inscriptions in the white glass underneath. Being able to personalise the souvenir would have been very popular. This souvenir is inscribed: ‘From Eva to Dad & Mum’.
The axe may also have had symbolic resonance for audiences at the time as a reminder of the region’s settlement by Pākehā in the mid-19th century. At the time of the Dunedin Exhibition in the 1920s, early settler societies were well established, there had been an outpouring of books of pioneer reminiscences, and a number of public commemorations dedicated to pioneers or ‘Old Identities.’ As Fiona Hamilton (2002) notes, these activities were a crucial part of the process of colonisation, creating Pākehā foundation narratives that emphasised industriousness and cooperation while obscuring memories of disruption and displacement. The axe can be viewed in that context, revealing something of how histories of Pākehā and settlement have been constructed.
References:
Hamilton, F. (2002). Pioneering History: Negotiating Pakeha Collective Memory in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. New Zealand Journal of History (36, 1), 66-81.
Ministry for Culture and Heritage (2020). New Zealand and South Seas International Exhibition opens. NZHistory.govt.nz. New Zealand: Ministry for Culture and Heritage.