'A breast-plate or war gorget'

1887.1.392 Taumi or Gorget, Tahiti

This Tahitian breastplate or taumi was collected on Cook's first voyage.  It was part of the collection of thirty objects given by Joseph Banks to Christ Church, his old Oxford college.

Taumi were worn by high ranking warriors, and they may have been worn in pairs, one on the front and one on the back - an illustration by John Webber shows a girl bringing a large roll of barkcloth 'as a present', to which are attached two taumi, suggesting that they may have belonged in pairs.  

'A young woman of Otaheite bringing a present' John Webber

Roger Rose, in 'Taumi Gorgets from the Society Islands' (in 'Artistic Heritage in a Changing Pacific', University of Hawaii Press, 1993) suggests that professional warriors on Tahiti, 'aito or toa, who achieved their position through valour, but who were also members of the elite ari'i class of society, or of the slightly lower rank of ra-atira, were eligible to wear the taumi in battle.  It is possible that the taumi represented the jaws of a shark, giving the wearer shark-like qualities.

The taumi is made from strips plaited coconut fibre, supported by a grid of ie'ie (Freycinetia sp.) aerial root which has been tied together with coconut fibre.   

1887.1.392 - back showing framework of ie'ie aerial root

The gorget is decorated with rows of pigeon feathers, interspersed with rows of sharks' teeth, possibly from the oceanic whitetip shark (Carcharinus longimanus).  It has been suggested that it is possible to obtain only about ten or twelve matching teeth from a shark - there are 130 teeth on the gorget, so this represents a resource of considerable value.   

Detail of shark teeth

The gorget is fringed with dog hair, again a rare and precious resource.   

Detail of dog hair holders

The hair is bound into 'hair holders' bound with coconut fibre.  It is possible that the dog hair was traded for from the Tuamotu Islands.  Johann Reinhold Forster, in 'Observations Made During A Voyage Round the World' notes that 'the whole gorget is fringed with long white dogs hair, imported from the Low Isles (Tuamotus) to O-Tahietee, and the Society Isles'.  

He also observed that 'The Low-Islands have a race of dogs with long white hair, which the natives employ in fringing their breastplates or war gorgets; and these low islanders cannot cultivate the mulberry tree on their sandy, barren ledges of lands, which includes their salt lagoons; therefore the these reciprocal wants, form a kind of commerce between the inhabitants of the high and low islands, and a mutual exchange of superfluities.’   

This idea of trading links between Tahiti and the Tuamotu Islands seems to be confirmed by a group of dog-hair holders, strung onto coconut fibre cord for storage or transport, in the British Museum (LMS210).  These were possibly from Ana’a Island in the Tuamotus.  

 

In 'Footprints in the Sand: Banks's Maori Collection, Cook's First Voyage 1768-71', by Paul Tapsell, (in Discovering Cook's Collections, edited by Michelle Hetherington and Howard Morphy (Canberra: National Museum of Australia, 2009), the possibility is raised that this object may have been a personal possession of Tupaia (Tupaea in Maori).  Tupaia was a high ranking priest taken on board the Endeavour on Tahiti as a navigational guide. Tupaia's belongings may have been appropriated by Joseph Banks after Tupaia's death in Batavia in 1770. Tapsell writes: 'So what happened to Tupaea's belongings, the taonga, after his death? Surely a high priest of ariki status would have had his own personal ornaments? Perhaps the chiefly breast ornament [1887.1.392] and flute [1903.130.20] now properly attributed as part of Banks's Christ Church collection were originally Tupaea's personal possessions.'

The Helmet (Whow) of wickerwork

Joseph Banks painted by Benjamin West, Usher Gallery, Lincoln.  

There are only two Tahitian Priests's helmets (fau) dating from the eighteenth century in existence today.  One is in the British Museum, and was probably collected by Joseph Banks on the first voyage.  It is possibly the one in the portrait above.  The other is Forster No 5 'The Helmet (Whow) of wickerwork four feet and a half high, covered with pigeon feathers in front, and ornamented with tropicbirds feathers on the edges.'

Pitt Rivers Fau - 1886.1.1683

This type of headdress was first described by Joseph Banks on Ra'iatea in August 1769:

‘Gratefull possibly for the presents we had made to these girls the people in our return tryd every method to Oblige us; particularly in one house the master orderd one of his people to dance for our amusement which he did thus:

He put upon his head a large cylindrical basket about 4 feet long and 8 inches in diameter, on the front of which was fastned a facing of feathers bending forwards at the top and edged round with sharks teeth and the tail feathers of tropick birds: with this on he dancd moving slowly and often turning his head round, sometimes swiftly throwing the end of his headdress or whow so near the faces of the spectators as to make them start back, which was a joke that seldom faild of making every body laugh especialy if it happned to one of us.’ 

Sir Joseph Banks, The Endeavour Journal 1769 August 2

A fau - sketch by Sydney Parkinson

The Pitt Rivers fau possibly belonged to the chief Patatau, as George Forster recorded in his journal for the 28th April 1774:

‘Potatow brought on board his monstrous helmet of war five feet high, and sold it for red feathers; some others followed his example, and targets without number were bought by almost every sailor. ‘ 

The function of the headdress in the Society Islands at the time remains a subject for debate.  

William Hodges, Fleet at Otaheite

According to Steven Hooper ‘we can be sure that fau were worn by men of high status in a warrior display context, certainly on board large naval vessels and probably on land.’  Birds’ feathers were associated with divinity on Tahiti and the public displays of these large headdresses together with huge war canoes, and quantities of bark cloth sent out an impression of wealth and power.

Karen Stevenson and Steven Hooper, ‘Tahitian Fau’, Journal of the Polynesian Society Special Issue ‘Polynesian Art Histories and Meanings in Cultural Contexts’ 116 No.2 (2007)

'Beautiful and noble in its kind.'

Forster 134 Mus. No. 1886.1.1340 Headdress, Marquesas

This is Forster No. 134. 'A headdress of mother of pearl & tortoise shell, with cock's feathers.'  Collected on the Marquesas in April 1774, Forster described these headdresses in 'A Voyage Round the World' - 'On their heads many of them wore a kind of diadem; this consisted of a flat bandage wrought of coco-nut core, on the outside of which several round pieces of mother of pearl, some of them five inches in diameter, were fixed, covered in the middle with a plate of tortoise-shell, perforated like fret-work. Several tufts of long, black and glossy cock's feathers formed the plumes to this head-dress, which was really beautiful and noble in its kind.' 

Image from the David Rumsey Map Collection

William Hodges, the official artist on the second voyage (1772-1775) drew a chief, Honu, from Tahuata, possibly from life on the 9th April 1774.  Forster describes the meeting - 'We went on shore after breakfast, and found our friendly natives assembled on the beach.  Among them was a chief, who was dressed in a cloak manufactured of the paper-mulberry bark, like the Tahetian cloth, and who wore the diadem, the gorget, the ear pendant, and bunches of hair. We learnt that this man was king of the whole island…'  

The diadem is known as a uhikana, the one collected by Forster being a rare double uhikana, here illustrated in the official account of the second voyage (Cook 1777, pl. XVII, fig. 4.)  

The motifs carved into the tortoiseshell overlay are seen on uhikana dating from the early contact period.  The ipu or 'container' motif is thought to represent a protective shell, such as of a turtle or crab, and to have a similar protective function for the wearer.

The Cook-Voyage collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum

I’m Jeremy Uden, a conservator at the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, and for the next two years I’ll be blogging here about my investigations into the museum’s Cook-Voyage collections.  

This two-year fellowship has been funded by the Clothworkers’ Foundation, which is the charitable arm of the Clothworkers’ Company (http://www.clothworkers.co.uk/)
 

Although the project began on the 3^rd January, I’ve been conserving the Tahitian Mourner’s costume (1886.1.1637), collected on Cook’s second voyage in 1774, for over a year now. The costume will be displayed later in January in a temporary exhibition.  Each part will be mounted separately, so that all the components can be seen clearly, including the amazing feather cape.

The costume as displayed in 2010

Today I have been working on the bindings that wind around the headdress of the costume.  These are made from a core of finely plaited human hair, wound with barkcloth strips.  More plaited hair is wrapped around the barkcloth.  There is a section made up of three cords, which is over 12m long, and two much shorter pieces.

In this photo you can see the bindings, as they appeared when we took the costume apart in 2010.  The hair had become very brittle and was in poor condition. 

The bindings after conservation

I spent over 100 hours securing the hair to the barkcloth using very small amounts of adhesive.  This has made the bindings far easier to handle, and earlier today we were able to coil them up to form a turban, using the smaller length of cord as a tie at the front.  The Pitt Rivers has a second headdress from a Mourner’s costume, (1886.1.1637 .9) and the bindings on that one are tied in the same way.  The coils of the turban were tied together with silk thread, which allows us to lift it on and off of the headdress – necessary because the turban will be displayed separately in the current exhibition.