Post cooked up by Emma Scott, Collections Assistant – Publications My Hocken colleagues are sick of hearing about my love for the air fryer. My air fryer has been moved out of the cupboard and has a permanent home on the kitchen bench. This move is significant as it could have easily been banished to […]

Post written by Collections Assistant – Publications, Gini Jory  ‘The year is 1926, and Shanghai hums to the tune of debauchery.’ In this 1920s retelling of Shakespeare’s classic Romeo and Juliet, a blood feud between two rival gangs that has been going on for generations has swept Shanghai into chaos. The Scarlets, with their newly […]

Post cooked up by Jen Anderson, Collections Assistant – Publications People who work with heritage material often find themselves compelled to demonstrate its relevance to contemporary society. Some connections are obvious, and some require a little more lateral thinking. Initially I intended to justify this carrot-themed post via the Easter bunny, but having tasted the […]

Post researched and written by Eilish McHugh-Smith, Collections Assistant – Publications Welcome back to the Book Review Corner of the Hocken Blog! Today we delve into the world of photography with a review of Self-Portrait by Marti Friedlander in conjunction with Hugo Manson.  The first thing that attracted me to Self-Portrait was its physicality. A […]

Blog post researched and written by Kari Wilson-Allan, Collections Assistant – Archives Content warning: this blog post includes quotes of homophobic statements. Reader discretion is advised. It is also acknowledged that there are a multitude of gay communities, and other communities situated around sexuality and gender. However, during the era discussed in this post, the […]

Post researched and written by Anna Petersen, Curator Photographs The Hocken holds the definitive archive of works by English-born photographer, George Chance (1885-1963).  The collection encompasses all aspects of his output from original prints, negatives, and colour slides, to proofs, albums, correspondence, sound recordings, written notes and published reproductions in the form of newspaper and […]

Post researched and written by Jen Jeffery, Collections Assistant – Archives Mirko (Michael) Trumic was born in Yugoslavia in 1928 and moved to Dunedin as a refugee in 1950 post-war. Trumic commented that Dunedin was ‘Not quite the tropical Gauginesque milieu [he] had imagined.’[1] Trumic had spent two years prior as a medical student before […]

Post cooked up by Eilish McHugh-Smith, Collections Assistant – Publications Our recent return to Covid alert level 4 prompted Hocken Staff to fish through their camera rolls and personal bookshelves in search of historical culinary delights to tantalise their bubble’s taste buds. In the preceding weeks, I had been on a mission to find a […]

Post written by General Assistant, Gini Jory Welcome to a new segment for the Hocken blog, where our staff review books we hold in our collections. Whether these be novels, poetry, non-fiction, books helpful for research or genealogy- hopefully we will cover it all in our new Book Review Corner! Today we start with a […]

Post researched and written by HUMS intern, Ceri Spivey Amongst the business records held here at the Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hākena, are those from the eminent local and national department store chain, the Drapery and General Importing Company of New Zealand (lovingly known as the D.I.C.). Established in 1884 by prominent businessman Bendix […]