Webb's Helps Repatriate Rare Kiwi Feather Cloak

• Rare Kahu Kiwi thought to date back to the mid 1800s
• Made from muka fibre that had been painstakingly woven by hand in the single-pair twining technique
• The piece had been in Sydney, where it had been in the collector’s family for 160 years
• Webb’s assisted in bringing it back to Aotearoa so it could be registered under the Protected Objects act (1975), meaning it must now remain in Aotearoa indefinitely.
• The cloak will be brought to the domestic market as part of our upcoming Material Culture sale, taking place Thursday 3 August.
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This week Webb’s welcomed a catalogue brimming with incredible art and objects sourced from around the world, one of the most impressive item in Webb’s upcoming Material Culture sale is one from here — a rare Kahu Kiwi that had been kept offshore for over 160 years.

Webb’s has had the honour of helping repatriating the cloak back to Aotearoa under the Protected Objects act (1975), where all Maori-made items over 50 years old are registered with the Ministry of Culture and Heritage and given a “Y-Number”. This means these items must stay in Aotearoa, and can only be purchased by registered collectors of taonga tuturu.

You can see the full auction catalogue here: https://auctions.webbs.co.nz/m/view-auctions/catalog/id/575

High resolution images can be found here: https://we.tl/t-ANEGya2hVv

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