Overview
A rare rain cape in Britain’s Royal Botanic Gardens Kew is made from leaves of tikumu (mountain daisy, Celmisia species) and harakeke fibres. Only one other tikumu cloak is known to be in a museum collection – in Canterbury Museum, New Zealand.
Tikumu
Tikumu, large-leaved mountain daisies (Celmisia species) grow widely and abundantly in New Zealand’s mountains. Maori weavers, particularly in the South Island, peeled the silvery underside (tomentum) from leaves of large tikumu to make a range of weatherproof garments.
The mountain daisy was popularly called ‘the leather plant’ in the 1800s because of the suede-like texture of its leaves. This cloak retains that texture, despite being more than 150 years old.
Constructing the cloak
More than 1,500 tikumu leaves are estimated to have been used. Harvesting and preparing the leaves would have taken a huge collective effort. The weaver had to scrape away the outer layers and remove the woody midrib, leaving the soft, pliable, water-resistant, underside of the leaf.
The weaver used tikumu leaves in two ways to create the cloak. She wove the foundation from a combination of muka (flax fibre) and tikumu leaves – the whenu (warp, or vertical threads) are alternately muka and tikumu. She then covered the surface with long strips made from tikumu leaves, which channel off the rain very effectively.
Signs of wear and tear
Signs of wear and tear on the cloak suggest that it was worn over the left shoulder. Many photographs from the 1800s show cloaks being worn in this way.
The cloak in Kew
Walter Mantell, a land surveyor in the South Island from 1848 to 1855, donated the cloak to Kew in 1858.
In 2008, conservation researcher Luba Dovgan Nurse recognised that the cloak was a taonga (cultural treasure). She began discussions about it with the London-based Maori group Ngati Ranana.
Research is continuing into the species of tikumu (Celmisia) used in the cloak, with the aim of identifying the iwi (tribe) that produced it.
Te Papa thanks Luba Dovgan Nurse for the information about the construction of this cloak.
Dovgan Nurse, L. 2008. Conservation of a rare Maori cloak made from the leaves of Celmisia and fibres of Phormium tenax: Maori taonga in the context of the Economic Botany Collection, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Unpublished MA dissertation, Textile Conservation Centre, University of Southampton, 214pp.