Unique to your Museum

Amongst the taxidermies, skeletons, and wet specimens, there is another form of animal preservation that is often forgotten about: the diaphonised specimens. Here at Tāmaki Paenga Hira, we are fortunate enough to have several diaphonised shore skinks (Oligosoma smithi) in our collection, with their records enhanced as part of the IDEA project.

These skinks have undergone a clearing and staining technique called diaphonisation, which makes the animal translucent by soaking the animal in a trypsin soup and, with the use of dyes, the animal’s bones and/or cartilage are stained. This process creates beautiful specimens of vibrant reds, pinks, blues and purples. The skinks here have been dyed with alizarin red and so the skeleton appears in reds and pinks. Diaphonisation allows for the ability to identify bone and cartilage structures as found internally without displacing them.

Due to the development of better imaging techniques, diaphonisation is becoming less common, however, it is finding new life in the hands of artists that appreciate their beauty and the rich diversity of anatomical structures formed in nature.

Want to know more? Read the full article here. 

The Museum collections hold many objects that have come through adversity and are not their whole selves, including some stained with the scent of fire. After more than 100 years, we can still catch a whiff of smoke from the burnt remnants of this New Zealand Ensign that flew over the New Zealand Soldiers’ Club in Salisbury, England before the club was completely destroyed by fire in the early hours of 2 July 1918.

Historian Felicity Barnes has written that ‘Clubs were presented … as familial places, with the comforts of home and its conventions too. Within the club setting, soldiers engaged in the world’s bloodiest war became "boys", to be looked after by women who were characterised as motherly.’

At the Salisbury club, soldiers could rest and relax away from camp with billiards, reading and writing materials, music, baths and meals. The Salisbury Town Council praised the work done by the club and passed a resolution of ‘deep sympathy’ for the New Zealanders at the loss of the club which could not be saved, the flames that night fanned by a fierce wind.

The club’s manager, Agnes Chilton Button, rescued the flag with the help of a fireman and donated it to the Auckland Ex-servicewomen’s Association who subsequently gifted it to the Museum when it opened in 1929.

The albatross is the world’s largest seabird and has long been considered by sailors as a good-luck charm.

Without more traditional bag making materials available at sea, an albatross’s foot works surprisingly well (if a bit gruesomely) as a purse. Resourceful sailors travelling through the Southern Ocean saw these majestic birds in a practical light, and their feet were often made into pouches to hold tobacco.

With its wrinkly skin and claws still visible, this particular pouch has been fashioned into a coin purse, evident by the floral filigree frame that clasps it shut.

Our records say this purse could have been made by a sailor en route to Australia either on a convict, merchant, or immigrant ship, perhaps for his sweetheart.

To learn how such a curious object came into being, take our Google Arts & Culture audio tour