A volume from the WhaleLIBRARY
Māori rei puta whale tooth pendant
Sir Jacob Epstein collection; 1961 auction; acquired 1962; possible repurposed Fijian tabua
The changing history of a whale-tooth object
The existing collection research records a whale-tooth rei puta associated with Sir Jacob Epstein’s collection, a 1961 auction and a subsequent acquisition in 1962. It also records a question about whether the object was adapted from a Fijian tabua.
Those details raise questions about material, making, exchange and later collecting. They do not establish that the object came from Kāpiti, or even that every stage of its earlier history is known. A reliable object biography needs the museum accession entry, catalogue images and published provenance compared together.
Explore connected books
Explore connected history
- A whale-tooth rei puta crosses museum collections
- Earlier Māori occupation
- Māori Land Info Kāpiti Island
- Te Ara image and map rights
- Puketapu cultural history and Cultural Impact Assessment
- The archaeology of New Zealand shore whaling
- Waikanae: Report on Te Ātiawa/Ngāti Awa Claims
- Waikanae North archaeological assessment
- Māori and whales: an enduring relationship
- Whales, taonga and customary resources
- A British Museum waka paddle with competing Cook Strait attribution
- Owen Mapp’s Ocean Balance and its Kāpiti provenance question