Ancestral Maori Storehouse Figure

The Maori art scholar, Roger Neich, has recently identified this exceptional Maori sculpture as one of only two known examples of its type in the world. This figure, along with twelve other M?ori woodcarvings, was presented to the Hunterian Museum in 1864 by William Clarke. Clarke was a prominent early settler in New Zealand's North Island, who apparently carried out the first land surveys for the Bay of Islands and Hokianga districts. As a land surveyor, Clarke would have visited Maori villages throughout the region, affording him ample opportunity to assemble his collection. Clarke returned to Britain sometime in 1861, where he resided for a time in Glasgow's fashionable West End, before returning to the Pacific in 1864.

This commemorative figure comes from the door of an elaborately ornamented Maori storehouse, called pataka.

This figure is thought to date from the early 1860s and appears to have been carved from a single slab of timber using steel tools. It has been coated in a traditional kokowai or red paint.