House Panel
date: label: Accession Date
content: 22 Aug 2001
label: Collection Date
content: 1956
name: label: Collector
content: Dr. Wilfrid Rall
label: Donor Name
content: Wilfrid Rall
notes: label: Notes
content: Slab of dark wood, stained darker, carved with elaborate designs and inset with paua shells. The main figure is a stylized man. He has long narrow eyes, set diagonally to make a V, long rounded brows, and a large heart-shaped mouth with teeth on the top and bottom. His chest is covered with parallel horizontal lines (ribs?). His shoulders and knees are spirals, and he seems to be holding a staff or stick that extends from his chin downwards. A much smaller figure with similar features is crouched in front of the larger man. The paua shell is missing from the smaller figure's right eye. The back of the slab is plain and smooth. 3 small round wooden pegs are nailed to the bottom (a fourth is missing).
label: Notes
content: This panel was purchased by the donor from an antique shop in Dunedin, New Zealand in 1956. The donor reports that he was told at the time by Dr. Harry Skinner, an anthropologist and Director of the Otago Museum in Dunedin, that the house panel was one of a set of four meeting house panels that had been carved for an international exhibition that was held in New Zealand in 1898 (this would be the Otago Jubilee Industrial Exhibition in Dunedin). But recent communications with Moira White at the Otago Museum dispute this account (copies are in the accession file). She says that records of the 1898 exhibition show numberous Maori materials, but no house carvings. She suggests that the donor remembered the date incorrectly, and that the panels were at the 1889 New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition in Dunedin. She further suggests that it may be from "the Ngati Porou [tribe's] house [named] Tumoana Kotore" (on the North Island, East Coast). That house was not carved for the exhibition, but the carvings were on display in the 1889 exhibition.
label: Notes
content: The Wa'a Project, established by Joshua Bell, Curator of Globalization (NMNH), included a Recovering Voices Community Research Visit June 16-27, 2018. The visit brought master and apprentice Hawaiian and Māori canoe carvers and builders to study E164016-0, a historic Hawaiian wa'a (canoe). The group included: Raymond Bumatay, master Hawaiian canoe carver; Alexander 'Alika' Bumatay, master Hawaiian canoe carver; James Eruera, master Māori canoe carver; Bryce Motu, apprentice Māori canoe carver; Leslie 'Les' Matiu (O'Connor), apprentice Māori canoe carver; Kālewa Correa, Curator of Hawai'i and the Pacific at Smithsonian's APAC; Alexis Ching, apprentice Hawaiian canoe carver and documentary book maker; Dino Morrow, documentary photographer; Shannon Hennessey, APAC intern. James Eruera discussed the importance of this house panel. There are four fingers on the statue which signify birth, life, death, and afterlife. Before Christianity reached Aotearoa/New Zealand they would only depict three fingers, which meant birth, life, and death.
label: Record Last Modified
content: 8 Jan 2020
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Dunedin, South Island (Te Waipounamu), New Zealand (Aotearoa), Polynesia
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
culture: label: Culture
content: Maori
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 2019763
label: USNM Number
content: E431594-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: House Panel
physicalDescription: label: Length
content: ca. 232.5 cm
label: Width
content: 48 cm
label: Height
content: 5.5 cm
label: Length - Object
content: 230.5 cm
label: Width - Object
content: 48.5 cm