Heaphy, Charles 1820-1881 :Wata or Provision house, at Otumatua on the North shore of Cook's Strait. Drawn by Chas Heaphy Esq.r [1841]. Day & Haghe. London, Smith, Elder [1845]

Mount Taranaki in the background of this view inside a pa, showing a provision store, elaborately carved, on poles with a notched central pole acting as a ladder, a Maori woman [?] about to ascend the central ladder with a dead sucking pig, and flax baskets (kete) of supplies stacked at its base to the right. A Maori man is beating an object, possibly fern root, with a pounder on a stone in the right foreground. Two figures are seated by a cooking pot in the background in front of a whare puni or sleeping house, a dog on the right. The decorated barge boards of another whare are visible and the palisades around the pa include a carved human figure with a pipe in its mouth.

The accompanying text reads: Chiefly used to keep articles of food. The carving is in wood, and these figures are painted with red ochre, charcoal, and white clay, in quaint patterns. In the back-ground is a ware puni or sleeping-house.

Based on Charles Heaphy's watercolour "Provision house at Otumatua Pah, Cape Egmont [1841]" (Ref. no. A-146-009). The watercolour has the background figures and the dog, but not the foreground figures. Other details have been reasonably faithfully followed in the lithograph, apart from the addition of tall trees outside the palisades of the pa.

Quantity: 1 colour art print(s).

Physical Description: Lithograph, hand-coloured 258 x 176 mm