IDNO

P.85345.MUS

Description

On display case label for 1922.436:
"Pukaea.
Small wooden trumpet.
Maori
New Zealand, Cook Collection.
d Earl of Sandwich."

Documentary photograph of the top of a "Small, wooden trumpet, with carving round the mouth end. There is also string binding round mouth end and just below the opening at the opposite end. The later terminates in two curved and pointed, beak like points.
Additional description: Funnel-shaped trumpet made from two separate longitudinal pieces. Object bound together near each end with strands of plaited string. Trumpet narrows to one end, but flares out at other which is carved into two pointed lips. These are decorated with incised geometric patterns. Opening of larger mouth has a rectangular section." [from MAA Object record 1922.436, JD 12/3/2010]

Place

Oceania Polynesia; Europe British Isles; New Zealand; United Kingdom; England; Cambridge; Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology [Aotearoa]

Cultural Affliation

Maori

Named Person

Photographer

?Museum Photographer

Collector / Expedition

Cook Collection; Earl of Sandwich [Object Collector and Donor]

Date

Collection Name

Museum Objects and Galleries

Source

Format

Print Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

P.85326 to P.85347 were found inside envelope now numbered C414/17/ which came from the box formerly numbered 162, now re-numbered C414/.

Collector: Collected by Captain Cook and given, along with other objects (many of which are in CUMAA, on loan from Trinity College), to the Earl of Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty. The latter provided funds for the voyage and the Sandwich Isles were named after him. His descendent presented the present artefact and 1922.435 to CUMAA. Prior to this they had remained at Hinchingbrooke, since Captain Cook first gave them to the Earl; Exhibited: On display in the Maudslay Hall, CUMAA, from 1990.

Bibliographical Reference: See ‘Artificial Curiosities’ (1978), A. Kaeppler, p.184, & fig.352 p.184. Evidence: Sandwich collection. Given by Cook, first or second voyage. Kaeppler states (p.181), ‘Maori sound-producers for music and ritual were pre-eminently wind instruments’. Also see Shawcross, 1970, p.337 (J.Tanner, May 1998). Also see ‘The Moari Collection at the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology’ by Peter Gathercole in ‘Taonga Maori Conference’ (1990). (J.Tanner, November 1998). See ‘From Pacific Shores: Eighteenth-century Ethnographic Collections at Cambridge - The Voyages of Cook, Vancouver and the First Fleet’ (J. Tanner, 1999:30).

Cook Collection: Captain James Cook undertook three world voyages around the globe from 1768 - 1779. The stated purpose of the first voyage (1768-1771) on the HMS Endeavour was to send a Royal Society team to observe the transit of the planet Venus from the vantage point of newly discovered Tahiti. However, the primary governmental motivation behind the first expedition was to establish the existence of 'Terra Australis Incognita' or the 'Great Southern Continent', which was believed to exist in order to balance the great northern land mass. Cook set sail from Plymouth on Friday 26th August 1768 and headed to South America, round Cape Horn and westwards to carry out the experiment in Tahiti, and then went on to circumnavigate the globe in pursuit of the presumed continent. The purpose of the second voyage (1772-1775) on the HMS Resolution and the HMS Adventure was to extend the search for the 'southern continent'. They sailed from Plymouth on 27 June 1772 and headed directly south past Cape Town and then set out on an eastward course of circumnavigation, crossing the Antartic Circle several times en route in an effort to seek the imagined continent. The third voyage (1776-1780) on the HMS Resolution and the HMS Discovery, was concerned with the search for a Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. They sailed from Plymouth on 13th July 1772, heading first for the Society Islands from whence they set course to search for the Northwest Passage. However, Cook was killed in Hawaii in 1779 and his command was taken up by Charles Clerke.
More than 2000 extant pieces can be traced from Cook's voyages (Kaeppler:1978), of which UCMAA has 215 identified objects. The majority of the material at UCMAA was collected from the Pacific, but also includes objects from the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America, the Northeast Coast of Asia and Tierra del Fuego in South America. Furthermore, all the three voyages are represented by objects in UCMAA's collection.
(J. Tanner, 1999).

CUMAA Exhibition: This object is currently on display in the Maudsley Gallery in the main New Zealand case. The string binding on the bottom of the trumpet has been tidied up and more string binding has been added just under the lips of the trumpet. This restoration work is no doubt due to the fact that the two pieces of the trumpet were coming apart (as can be clearly seen in P.85347).

This catalogue record has been updated with the support of the Getty Grant Program One. [Alex Nadin, 18/3/2003].