Source: Radio New Zealand
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Two years after a single huia feather sold at auction for a world record $46,521 an entire specimen of the extinct bird is going under the hammer.
Despite the record-breaking feather Leah Morris, head of decorative arts at Webb’s Auction House, said they had priced the full bird “conservatively” at between $20,000 and $40,000.
Morris said entire huia did not come to to auction regularly, and this particular example was from a private collection “the vendor has inherited through descent and now he feels it’s time to give it to a new kaitiaki to look after it”.
The huia had significance far beyond monetary value. For Māori, the birds were revered and only rangatira were allowed to wear the feathers.
They were also prized among pākeha, both in New Zealand and abroad, especially after the Duke of York – later King George V – was presented with a feather in 1901.
“That kind of created a bit of a craze and everyone wanted to collect these beautiful feathers with white tips, and so that’s kind of driven the extinction of the birds,” Morris said.
Loss of habitat also hastened the bird’s demise along with their value as a scientific specimen, due to being a dramatic example of sexual dimorphism in birds. The females have a long curving beak, while the male’s beak is shorter and sturdier.
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Huia pairs would feed together. The male beaks were designed to break open decaying wood, and then the females would insert their long beaks into the wood and pull out larvae.
The huia was not the only piece of New Zealand history currently for sale at Webbs. A collection of photographs from the 1850s to 1920s assembled by the late Roger Ward will be sold off.
Ward was born in New Zealand but lived overseas for most of his life, assembling the collection over many decades. The collection contained more than 1500 original photos – the first 600 currently for sale in an online auction in individual lots.
Megan Shaw, Webb’s art manager, described the collection as phenomenal in scale. The subject matter ranged from landscapes to towns, and included extensive depictions and portraits of Māori.
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Shaw said one of the highlights was a portrait of Ana Rupeni and her baby. The photo became the basis of a famous 1878 Gottfred Lindauer portrait, which is now in the Auckland Art Gallery.
Despite the historic nature of the photos, they still had deep connections to modern-day Aotearoa. Shaw said relatives of subjects in the images had contacted Webb’s, while others had helped identify people in the photographs.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand