Untangling the threads

This ambitious two year project presents many challenges. The detail in our records varies greatly, the language is inconsistent across groups of taonga and there is no set way to store many of these objects, so the team has been working to create innovative solutions for storage and record-keeping. One of the major goals is to improve accessibility to these taonga, so our storage technicians have been puzzling through new techniques to ensure these fragile taonga keep their shape and can be easily viewed by visiting manuhiri looking to research the techniques, materials and stories that are woven into these taonga.

In a broader sense, the ethnographic framework that has historically been used to organise the taonga Māori collections is now being recast. Instead a Mātauranga Māori approach is being developed by our collections team that recovers taonga names and redefines the relationships they have with each other.

To assist us in doing this, we have recruited a reference group of seven of Aotearoa’s most accomplished weavers to offer cultural knowledge and the correct kupu to be used both in Te Reo Māori and English, to describe the taonga, materials, making processes, their function and cultural significance.

Over the next two years, this group named ‘Taumata Mareikura’ will look at key taonga within our 2,500 textile collection, starting sequentially from whariki (mats), to kete (bags and baskets), Kākahu (cloaks), piupiu and māro (waist garments), Hīnaki (fishing traps and nets) and nga mea taputapu (including: poi, whai, games and pastimes and other miscellaneous taonga). 

Our language is descriptive..if we are really truly going to
look through a Māori lens then what we have is an abundance of information…