» Home > (Page 2)

Yearly Archives: 2011

Ore Struck – celebrating the sesquicentennial of the discovery of gold in Otago

Friday, May 20th, 2011 | Anna Blackman | No Comments

20 May 2011 marks 150 years since Gabriel Read discovered the payable gold that led to the Otago gold rush in an area now known as Gabriel’s Gully near the Otago town of Lawrence. This momentous discovery and the gold rush that followed rapidly transformed the face of Victorian Dunedin. This exhibition, which explores the use of gold in contemporary art and photography, has been mounted to commemorate this sesquicentennial. Artisans and artists have been awe struck by this highly malleable and alluring precious metal for thousands of years.

At a time of economic hardship when the price of gold is soaring, the contemporary art and photography included in this show encourages us to look beyond the monetary worth of this precious metal and to value gold for its physical properties and symbolic associations.

The show includes more than forty artworks and photographs that either employ gold as a material or colouring, or take gold mining as their subject. There is a focus on work by artists with strong associations to Otago such as Cilla McQueen, Ralph Hotere, Mary McFarlane and Russell Moses. Other artists that feature in the show, and well known for their use of gold in their work, are Tony Lane and Max Gimblett. Photographers with work on display include Ben Cauchi and Marti Friedlander, who use the early photographic process of gold toning as well as Peter Peryer and Peter Evans who have both captured the open cast gold mine near Macraes Flat in East Otago.A small number of historical items including a fifteenth century Book of Hours from, an 18th century Russian ikon, late nineteenth century gold-toned photographs by Rev John Kinder and an album of photographs of Chinese miners who worked in various Otago goldfields, provide a historical context for the contemporary works.

David O. Robertson and the Port Chalmers Garrison Hall Mural

Saturday, May 14th, 2011 | Anna Blackman | 3 Comments

Few people had heard of the nineteenth century artist David Ogilvie Robertson before an extensive 20 metre long mural, painted by him in 1892, was uncovered last week in Port Chalmers during the demolition of Garrison Hall. According to an article in the Otago Daily Times published on 3 October, 1892, the wall hanging was completed for a Japanese-themed carnival of music and stalls. The linen mural depicted a Japanese scene from the island of Kinsu that included a bridge leading to a temple, adjacent islands and several trading junks.


In 2010 an album comprising paintings, sketches and photographs of marine paintings by Robertson, a former Port Chalmers resident, was donated to the Hocken’s pictorial collections. The 60-page album titled ‘Rough Sketches and Photographs of Oil Paintings by D.O. Robertson’ contains paintings of Japanese scenes, maritime paintings, photographs of the West Coast Sounds and ship paintings, pencil sketches, caricatures and clippings from late nineteenth century newspapers that feature reviews of his art.

Robertson was the son of the accomplished Scottish-born maritime artist Captain Thomas Robertson who first visited Port Chalmers in the 1850s. His second trip was to deliver Pirate, a 280-tonne steamer to a Dunedin company and in 1862/3 he made Port Chalmers his home. For reasons that remain unknown, Captain Robertson moved to Japan in 1871 at the age of 51 and took his son with him. Upon the Captain’s death in 1873, Robertson, then aged twenty-five, returned to New Zealand. This experience of Japan or a later pilgrimage to his father’s grave at the foreigner’s cemetery in Yokohama, may have inspired the theme of the Port Chalmers mural.

David O. Robertson attended the Otago School of Art where he was a contemporary of David K. Hutton, Nellie Hutton and Frances Hodgkins. He was awarded a first class certificate in drawing from the school in 1896. The Union Steamship Company commissioned him to paint pictures of the ships in their fleet, for display in the Company’s Wellington office. He exhibited his paintings at the Port Chalmers chemist shop owned by his brother-in-law, William Elder, and at the atelier of David De Maus, a photographer and one-time mayor of Port Chalmers.

The Hocken holds three oil paintings by Captain Thomas Robertson, whose reputation as a maritime painter surpasses that of his son’s, including one that features the Otago Harbour.

To find out more about the discovery of the Garrison Hall mural by Robertson visit http://www.odt.co.nz/print/159378

Records and Archives Week 2011From the Hangi pit to the Weetbix kid: Recording the history of food in New Zealand

Thursday, May 5th, 2011 | Anna Blackman | No Comments

I know I’m a bit late in the week posting this and it isn’t strictly a Hocken thing but you might be interested anyway. All these activities extend over the month of May.

The Archives and Records Association of New Zealand (ARANZ) has selected From the Hangi pit to the Weetbix kid: Recording the history of food in New Zealand as the theme for Records and Archives Week 2011 (RAW). A programme of three exhibitions and a Lunchtime Seminar series has been arranged for the month of May.

The Lunchtime Seminar programme will be held 12.00 noon in the Dunningham Suite, 4th Floor, Dunedin Public Library, The Octagon, Dunedin.

Tuesday 10 May – Dr Jim Williams – “The well fed Māori of yesteryear”. Jim is a Senior Lecturer in Te Tumu, the School of Māori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies. Dr Williams’ research interests include Ngāi Tahu history and language and resource management including mahika kai, as well as comparisons with other Indigenous peoples.

Tuesday 17 May – Dr Michael Stevens – “Muttonbirding in Southern NZ”. An overview of the seasonal harvesting and preservation of juvenile titi (sooty shearwaters) by southern Kai Tahu from the so-called Titi Islands – several dozen islands adjacent to Rakiura/Stewart Island. This activity is commonly known as muttonbirding. The talk will be given by Dr Michael J. Stevens, an historian and a “muttonbirder”.

Tuesday 24 May -Mike Lord – President of Federated Farmers Otago speaking on changes in farming and farm recordkeeping. The primary producers of food in NZ have gone from being for the most part family businesses keeping records in diaries and notebooks to large corporate operations using sophisticated electronic systems to keep track of business.

For further information regarding the talks contact Anna Blackman, ph 4798867, anna.blackman@otago.ac.nz

Exhibition Programme

1. Feeding A Nation: Our Provincial Pantry

Archives New Zealand in Dunedin is holding an exhibition entitled “Feeding A Nation : Our Provincial Pantry” as part of Records and Archives Week 2011. This exhibition will open on 2 May, and run until 10 June 2011, at Archives New Zealand’s Dunedin Regional Office, 556 George Street, Dunedin.

This exhibition features an assortment of archives that illustrate the government’s involvement in food and administration in the Deep South.

The government’s role in the regulation of the food industry is demonstrated through correspondence relating to tutu poisoning in the 19th century, and documents relating to the transportation of fruit by rail, the testing of milk for radioactive material, and the debate over the presence of cats in food outlets in the 20th century.

Food in government institutions is represented by ration and requisitions books from Dunedin Hospital and Seacliff Lunatic Asylum, through to documents relating to the school milk scheme and the quality of meat in Dunedin’s 19th century gaol.

Also featured are photographs and set designs of Alison Holst’s earliest television cooking shows produced by DNTV-2 in the 1960s and 1970s, and a selection of mid-20th century food packaging kept by Department of Health officials during their inspections.

Films created by the National Film Unit on a variety of culinary topics will also be shown.

For further information, please contact: Peter Miller, Dunedin Regional Archivist, Archives New Zealand, Tel: (03) 477 0404. Email: dunedin@archives.govt.nz. Archives New Zealand’s Dunedin Regional Office, 556 George Street, Dunedin.

2. Communing through Food, Faith and Fellowship

The Presbyterian Archives Research Centre offers a series of byte-sized entrees that highlight the Church’s relationship and interaction with food.
We invite you to partake in the delights of Ladies a Plate: a display of photographs and ephemera which highlight occasions when church people gather to share food. At the Archives Research Centre, Hewitson Wing, Knox College, Arden Street, Dunedin throughout the month of May.

Enter the blogosphere and feast on the Food Production displays found at www.preshist.wordpress.com:

· The production of Arrowroot

· The development of Te Whaiti Maori Boys Farm

· Feast and Famine – Overseas Aid

The act of eating and sustaining our bodies cannot be separated from our spirits. As communities of faith the age old tradition of a shared meal brings us together to share our stories, celebrate our history, reflect on our faith, and build our communal outreach.

For further information, please contact: Yvonne Wilkie, Director of Archives, Archives Research Centre, Hewitson Wing, Knox College, Arden Street, Dunedin. Tel: (03) 473-0777 Email: Yvonne.wilkie@knoxcollege.ac.nz.

3. From the Paddock to the Plate – Archives from the family farm

ResearchWriteNZ presents images, documents, ephemera and other records describing the changing patterns of food production through four generations on one property over six decades.

Exhibition is open from Monday 2 May until Friday 3 June 2011, in the Dellow Seminar Room.
Hours: 9.00 am – 5.00 pm Weekdays and 10.00 am – 1.00 pm Saturdays.
Alternative viewing times are by appointment and special interest groups are welcome.

For further in formation, please contact: Dr Jennie Coleman, Tel: (03) 470 1109 or 027 222 4214 Email: jennie@researchwrite.co.nz. 1st Floor, Capitol Building, 67 Princes Street, Dunedin (opposite Savoy Restaurant). http://www.researchwrite.co.nz

Soldiers diaries and letters

Thursday, April 21st, 2011 | Anna Blackman | 2 Comments

Behind the downstairs reference desk at the Hocken are some shelves where each week’s newly acquired books are kept for staff to familiarise themselves with what is newly published. In the lead up to Anzac Day each year there are often books relating to New Zealand’s experience of war, and in particular the First and Second World Wars. The stand out book on the shelf last week was Glyn Harper’s latest, Letters from Gallipoli : New Zealand Soldiers Write Home. Professor Harper has collected together and edited the letters of many soldiers to tell the story of Gallipoli in a kind of collective first person account.

Letters from Gallipoli includes letters that are held at the Hocken Collections. We are grateful to many Otago soldier’s letters and diaries which have been generously donated by families. We would welcome further donations of soldier’s papers and photographs, not just relating to the First and Second World Wars but all wars that New Zealanders have experienced. These kinds of papers are the primary sources for books such as Professor Harper’s, and they are also regularly used by University of Otago students for their studies. Apart from post-grads researching and writing theses, Professor Tom Brooking’s HIST 105 paper focuses on the ANZAC’s and their legacy, students of this paper make intensive use of some of the soldier’s papers cared for at the Hocken.

A selection of soldiers papers from the Hocken Collections

To hear more about Professor Harper’s research and the book listen to Radio NZ online
2009 interview (half way through research)
2011 interview (project finished)

War is almost certainly the most popular topic for historical research in New Zealand after family history. And so often family history is entertwined with war history. This keen interest is undoubtedly because of New Zealander’s close personal involvement in these wars. Almost every NZ family in the early to mid 20th century had at least one or more family member(s) in the armed forces and even if they didn’t their daily lives were greatly effected by what was happening.

The Hocken Collections is well resourced to meet this interest and has produced a series of subject guides to assist researchers. The guides are available in PDF form from the Guides page of our website. There are five guides covering the NZ Wars 1840s, NZ Wars 1860s-1870s, South African War, World War I and World War II.

Post prepared by Anna Blackman, Curator of Archives and Manuscripts

Nobblers, duffers, and life on the goldfields

Friday, April 8th, 2011 | Anna Blackman | No Comments

The spirit of the Otago Gold Rush is colourfully captured in Allan Houston’s manuscripts. Not much is known about Houston, but he arrived from Scotland on the Hamilla Mitchell in September 1864 and was for a short time a self-described miners’ representative, practical digger, and storekeeper at Gabriel’s Gully. His manuscript, compiled in 1865, includes description of work and social life on the goldfields, politics, farming, commerce, flora, fauna, and settlements in Otago.


A group of Tuapeka men

Commenting on a digger’s reminiscences of the first rush in 1861, Houston wrote: ‘Of all unpoetical sort of things, one of the most so, is for a young, newly married person to “go off to the diggings”. He is indeed a brave, bold, man who can go straight home & without wincing quietly say “Wife I’m off to the new rush”! It’s more trying than “popping the question” for the decent man has a great chance of being considered insane by his affectionate partner in Life – “What! Going to the diggings? Eh! what do you mean, Sir?”’

Houston explains some of the lingo in use at the time, including:

  • Making Tucker: Getting gold only sufficient to make a living.
  • A Duffer: A failure – disappointment.
  • A Stringer: A small vein of gold that does not pay, but leads a digger on ‘Will-o’the-Wisp’ like, and ends in a ‘Duffer’.
  • Cockatoos: Small owners of land, but poor.
  • Jumping a Claim: Taking forcible possession – ‘Might being right’ ‘a-la-revolver’ – Any person having a ‘Miner’s Right’ or ‘Licence’, can lawfully ‘Jump’ the claim of those without this document.
  • New Chum: The latest arrival.
  • Old Identity: Old Settlers of Otago – Barracouta – i.e. a fish contemptibly applied to old settlers.
  • New Iniquity: The Victorian new arrivals.
  • A Nobbler: A glass of any Liquor – usually costs 1/- at the diggings. 
Houston’s description and photos of Balclutha and the Crown Inn.

These manuscripts would be a great transcription project for someone. The picture painted is sometimes a little too rosy to be convincing, but Houston was there and his writing is full of life, charm, and a sense of optimism prevailing over adversity. 

The scene at Gabriel’s Gully, 1865


Post prepared by David Murray, Assistant Archivist, from Houston, Allan: ‘The Gold fields of Otago, A.H.’s Jottings 1865 with Lithographic Illustrations. Memoranda of Otago Gold diggings and of Gold Diggers, from personal inspection and reliable information written in March 1865’ (Misc-MS-1413).

James Hector and the Geological Mapping of Otago

Wednesday, March 16th, 2011 | Anna Blackman | No Comments

To coincide with “Hector Day” 16 March, we are launching a new online version of a map documenting the geological survey of Otago and Southland carried out by James Hector in the early 1860s. 16 March is Hector’s birthday. Hector is one of New Zealand’s most respected scientists, and after he completed the Otago and Southland survey he went on to head the New Zealand Geological Survey and the Colonial Museum in Wellington.

Link to view Hector map website;
http://www.otago.ac.nz/library/treasures/hector/map.php

The original map hung in the Geology Department Museum for many years and by the the late 1970s there was concern about deterioration of the map, leading to discussions with the Hocken Library about its repair and conservation. It was sent away for restoration with a grant from the Art Galleries and Museums Association of New Zealand, but little documentation has survived. For over 25 years the map was overlooked. Finally, in 2007 it was located in the Auckland Art Gallery, and returned to the Hocken Library.

The University of the Third Age Charitable Trust has generously funded this project to conserve the original map and make the map available to a much wider audience.The original map is now housed safely at the Hocken Library.

The original map is incredibly detailed, to create the digital version the map was scanned at the New Zealand Micrographics Heritage Materials Imaging Facility. Apart from making the map widely available through the website, digitisation enables researchers to examine specific areas of the map in detail without resorting to magnifying glasses.

James Hector c.1879. MS-0445-4/07

The website content was authored by researcher Simon Nathan and designed by the University Library Web Developer, Merrin Brewster. Cleaning, flattening and conservation was carried out by local Conservator, Marion Mertens.

Hocken Snapshop of photographs from the Library’s collections goes live

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011 | Anna Blackman | 2 Comments

The Hocken has just launched a new online service making the photographic collections housed at the Hocken Library more accessible to remote users.

Over 33,000 images have been digitized, relating to people and places from all over New Zealand.  A small portion of the Hocken’s large shipping collection is also included.  Copies of the images are available for purchase over the internet and a zoom function greatly assists in the use of the photographs for research purposes.

Emails from readers are already arriving on a daily basis confirming that the site is proving an instant success.  Coupled with the fact that the Photographs Collection database is also now available online, people are more able to see for themselves what we hold and direct specific questions and requests to staff.

The Hocken Snapshop link is as follows:

http://hockensnapshop.ac.nz/

Children from Milton School visiting Thomson & Co. factory in Dunedin by E.A. Phillips, Dudley Collection, Photographs, Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hakena, University of Otago. S10-243c.

Post prepared by Anna Petersen, Assistant Curator of Photographs.

‘Homing in’ on Poet Laureate Cilla McQueen’s literary archive

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011 | Anna Blackman | No Comments

MS-2400/045

Cilla McQueen is one of New Zealand’s major and much lauded poets. Her first volume of poetry, ‘Homing In’, was published in 1982 and since this time she has published eleven volumes of poetry, several of them award winners. Themes including landscape, loss, homeland, displacement and colonisation infuse her evocative writing.

In 2009 she was appointed Poet Laureate for 2009-2011 and in 2010 her most recent volume of poetry ‘The Radio Room’ was published.
McQueen has held the University of Otago’s Burns Fellowship for 1985 and 1986, a Fulbright Visiting Writers’ Fellowship to Stanford University in 1985 and a Goethe Institut Scholarship to Berlin, in 1991 she was awarded the QEII Arts Council Scholarship in Letters. She has also won the New Zealand Book Award three times. McQueen received an honorary doctorate in literature from the University of Otago in 2009. In 2012 she received a Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement (Poetry).
MS-2400/111
McQueen is also an accomplished and popular performer of her poetry.
MS-2400/058, MS-3247/220, MS-3247/275

McQueen’s archives, held at the Hocken Collections, contain a rich variety of papers including manuscript poetry and plays, correspondence, sound recordings and photographs

Blog post prepared by Debbie Gale, Arrangement and Description Archivist

Baptists and best sellers on the Taieri

Monday, February 7th, 2011 | Anna Blackman | 1 Comment

Photographs and a short manuscript from the archives of the Mosgiel Baptist Church (AG-263/023, AG-263/053 and AG-263/054).

F.W. Boreham (1871-1959) is not widely known today, but in his time he sold over a million books.  Frank Boreham arrived in New Zealand from England in 1895 to become the first minister of Mosgiel Baptist Church. The young man quickly proved himself as a successful and popular preacher, pastor and writer. His sermons appeared in the Taieri Advocate and he became a regular contributor of leading articles to the Otago Daily Times. He also edited the New Zealand Baptist.  The first of his several dozen books was published before he left England, to be followed by The Whisper of God and Other Sermons, published in 1902. Many of his books were devotional in character, but they also included charming tales of people and places he had known. Boreham moved to Australia in 1906. He retained fond memories of his first pastorate in Mosgiel, which featured in some of his later books. For instance, the booklet The Bachelors of Mosgiel (1936) is a “collection of unusual love stories of crusty old bachelors never suspected of having any.” Boreham’s writing might be dismissed as simple and sentimental today, but it was also engaging, as the opening of The Home of the Echoes (1921) reveals:


Hester Spanton – Auntie Hester, as everybody called her – was the tenant of a large second-hand store and a small asthmatic body. I used at times to think that the adjectives might be regarded as interchangeable. If you had described her as the occupant of an asthmatic store and a second-hand body, the terms would have seemed perfectly congruous and fitting. Her poor little body looked a very second-hand affair. It was terribly the worse for wear, and was so battered and broken that Auntie Hester could only crawl about by the aid of a crutch. It gave you the impression that it had been bought and sold over and over again, and that, having got it cheaply, none of its owners had taken any care of it.

The Merry Man of Mosgiel, published by Epworth Press, London, 1936.

There is a special F.W. Boreham collection at the Mosgiel Library (described by Barbara Frame in the March 2005 issue of New Zealand Libraries), and another at Carey Baptist College in Auckland. But southerners who wish to know more of one of the best-selling authors of the early twentieth century may like to start with a perusal of the 59 individual Boreham titles held by the Hocken (some in more than one edition).  Also available at the Hocken are the Taieri Advocate and Otago Daily Times, which feature Boreham’s early journalism, and the archives of the Mosgiel Baptist Church.

Blog post prepared by Ali Clarke, Library Assistant – Reference.




Bringing it Home installation

Tuesday, February 1st, 2011 | Anna Blackman | 1 Comment

The aim with most exhibitions is to appear effortless, as if artworks, text panels and display shelves simply appeared on the gallery walls. The many hours of hard work put in to achieve this result can therefore remain hidden. This post offers a glimpse behind-the-scenes at the installation of Bringing it Home, which has just opened at the Hocken Gallery and celebrates the centenary of the Home Science/Consumer and Applied Science department at the University of Otago.

Jane Malthus, one of the curators for the exhibition, here finishes the work of designer Ryan Gallagher and pins the last of 500 student ID photos to the wall. Each had been individually scanned from originals, printed, trimmed and pinned to create an impressive grid of faces, an artistic installation in itself.

In a first for the Hocken, we now have a kitchen installed in the gallery! While it appears to have been lifted straight out of a 1960s-era home, it was in fact built from scratch by Bill Ingram, Design Studies’ expert technician, and curator Michael Findlay. Having figured out the logistics of mounting the life-sized (and ‘life-weight’) cabinets, they were then filled with kitchen items of the 60s and 70s (kindly lent by the Consumer Food Science department and Michael Findlay).

These are just a few aspects of this fascinating exhibition, that also includes original clothing items made by students, Tom Esplin’s lecture slides for his art appreciation lectures, film footage from 1961, Design Studies technical equipment dating back to 1987, graduate profiles, photographs and more!

Come and enjoy the show, on until 5 March upstairs in the Hocken Gallery. Blog post prepared by Lucy Clark, Registrar.