Research Catalog

Title

The lives of colonial objects / Annabel Cooper, Lachy Paterson and Angela Wanhalla.

Publication

Dunedin, New Zealand : Otago University Press, 2015.

Supplementary Content

• Contributor biographical information
• Publisher description

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Cooper, Annabel
• Paterson, Lachy, 1958-
• Wanhalla, Angela

Description

368 pages : colour illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

The Lives of Colonial Objects is a sumptuously illustrated and highly readable book about things, and the stories that unfold when we start to investigate them. In this collection of 50 essays the authors, including historians, archivists, curators and Maori scholars, have each chosen an object from New Zealand's colonial past, and their examinations open up our history in astonishingly varied ways. Some are treasured family possessions such as a kahu kiwi, a music album or a grandmother's travel diary, and their stories have come down through families. Some, like the tauihu of a Maori waka, a Samoan kilikiti bat or a flying boat, are housed in museums. Others - a cannon, a cottage and a country road - inhabit public spaces but they too turn out to have unexpected histories. Things invite us into the past through their tangible, tactile and immediate presence: in this collection they serve as 50 paths into New Zealand's colonial history. While each chapter is the story of a particular object, The Lives of Colonial Objects as a whole informs and enriches the colonial history of Aotearoa New Zealand.

Subjects

• New Zealand > Social life and customs
• New Zealand > Colonization
• Material culture > New Zealand > History
• New Zealand > History > 19th century

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Intimate immensity: a pūtōrino in the Peabody Essex Museum / Lacy Mackintosh -- Te Haupapa / Pāora Tapsell -- Voyaging taonga: the Kīngi tauihi / Kelvin Day -- William Colenso's composing stick / Sydney J. Shep -- The harpoon's head / David Haines -- 'Keep the head cool, the feet warm, and the bowels open': Octavius Harwood and the Weller Brothers' medicine chest / Jonathan West -- Colonising through play: The Crowthers' Noah's Ark / Lynette Townsend -- The Bishop's register / F. Jane Teal -- The face on the wall: Mrs Humphrey Devereux as object, as art, as family / Charlotte Macdonald -- Spinks Cottage: heritage, history and use / Catherine Bishop -- The piano at The Elms / Kirstine Moffat -- From 'Home sweet home' to the 'Kangaroo hunt polka': the colonial voyages of Marian Sargood's music album / Kate Stevens -- Portrait of a material life: the photograph of Richard and Augusta Webb / Jill Haley -- A photograph, a feeding bottle and the tragedies of colonial family life / Alison Clarke -- William Speer's album: a scrapbook of colonial travel / Angela Wanhalla -- Retrieved from oblivion? Wiremu Kīngi Te Rangitaake and the photographic object / Ruth Harvey -- 'A sparrow alone upon the house top': the Te Pihoihoi Press / Lachy Paterson -- He Rau Mahara: the Te Wananga Ledger / Migoto Eria -- Minute books: an integral part of the Māori Land Court / Paerau Warbrick -- A road into Te Urewera / Annabel Cooper -- Dunite: the adventures of a rock in colonial New Zealand / Megan Wells -- Whale tales / Rosi Crane -- The travelling stereopticon / Barbara Brookes -- Unanswered prayers: the failure of W. F. Gordon's self-promotion / Rebecca Rice -- Embroidering the Whanganui / Claire Regnault -- Te tokotoko / Megan Pōtiki -- A church lectern made by a celestial of industry and ingenuity / Steve Austin -- The boyhood diary of Herries Beattie / Tony Ballantyne -- Billies in colonial Australia and New Zealand / Helen Leach -- On holiday, at home: Christchurch's seaside tent 'camps', c. 1892-c.1910 / Kerry Hines -- An Art Nouveau jug collected by Walter Cook / Michael Fitzgerald -- Katherine Mansfield's hei tiki / Jane Stafford -- Te Pai o Ngā Āhua: the visitors' books at the Lindauer Art Gallery / Roger Blackley -- Toko toru tapu: a tale of four churches / Damian Skinner -- A gentleman's slippers / Chanel Clarke and Catherine Smith -- Māori monument or Pākehā propaganda? The memorial to Keepa Te Rangihiwinui, Whangarei / Ewan Morris -- Naturalising Nightingale in the Ashburton Domain: the Florence Nightingale Memorial Tree and Tablet / Katie Pickles -- A bottle of mineral water from Te Aroha / Peter Hodder -- The Rotorua Bathhouse Radium Activator: from therapautic device to quack curiosity / Rebecca Priestly -- 'Pōua's cloak': the Haberfield family kahu kiwi / Michael J. Stevens -- Feathers for a wartime bride / Kate Hunter -- 'Badness personified': Nola Pratt's photograph album / Chris Brickell -- Hiding and revealing: the emotional history of a travel diary / Genevieve de Pont -- From polo to poultry: a planter's legacy / Jane McCabe -- Reconfiguring cricket culture in colonial Sāmoa / Safua Akeli -- 'A "lucky" snap': reframing colonial culture through a pictorial lens / Felicity Barnes -- The 'smiling boys': the New Zealand health stamps of 1931 / Mark Stocker -- The Rin Tin Tin plaque: a man, his dog and a Japanese prisoner of war / Kristyn Harman -- The final link in the Empire: New Zealand and the TEAL Short Solent Flying Boat / Michael Findlay and Gerry Barton -- Afterword: the Wharenui Mataatua, and some thoughts about things / Conal McCarthey and Jonathan Mané-Wheoki.

Call Number

JFE 16-25

ISBN

• 1927322022
• 9781927322024

LCCN

2014481634

OCLC

906879279

Title

The lives of colonial objects / Annabel Cooper, Lachy Paterson and Angela Wanhalla.

Publisher

Dunedin, New Zealand : Otago University Press, 2015.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Connect to:

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description

Added Author

Cooper, Annabel, editor.

Paterson, Lachy, 1958- editor.

Wanhalla, Angela, editor.

Research Call Number

JFE 16-25