Image supplied by: Auckland War Memorial Museum Tamaki Paenga Hira
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Home and away
Today we release two new stories – Collecting
and Furniture – which together provide a fascinating study of New Zealand’s cultural relationships with the outside world. They invite the question, ‘Are we no more than Europe’s most distant outpost?’
As author Richard Wolfe explains, the initial collecting impulse in this country came from European explorers who were interested in showing off the wonders of a strange new world to collectors and savants at home. So
James Cook
and his crew collected plants
and... Read more
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Latest stories in Daily Life-
Crazes for collecting ferns and stamps swept New Zealand in the 19th century. In the early 2000s collectors trawled garage sales, second-hand shops and the internet to indulge their…
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The furniture of 19th-century cabinetmaker Anton Seuffert, featuring exquisite marquetry in native woods, was a far cry from the simple items fashioned from whalebone or split timber by early…
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Favourite images and media
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Life story: Alexander Horsburgh Turnbull
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Alexander Turnbull, whose outstanding collection of books, manuscripts and artworks became the nucleus of a library bearing his name, got the collecting bug early, starting with coins when he was eight years old…
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Highlights from Signposts, our blog-
By Matthew Oliver
Late last year we published our first iBook and it’s available (for free)
here in the iTunes store. It’s a small step for us but one that represents our current attempts to explore and experiment.... Read more
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By Jock Phillips
I was intending to write a tribute, in this week of his death, to Ralph Hotere, one of this country’s greatest artists; a man whose work spanned two cultures and grew out of a fierce... Read more
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By Kristy Mayes
‘Stand up if you can name more than one Kardashian.’ ‘Now stand up if you know New Zealand’s child poverty rate.’
That humbling challenge posed by Clay Johnson
kicked off... Read more
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