Heritage et AL

Whites Aviation produced hand coloured photographs of New Zealand for around fifty years. When they began in 1945 colour photography wasn’t accessible as it was only in its infancy so the hand coloured photographs they sold were very popular. These now iconic images can be found in cafés like Replete i n Taup ō  o r Vudu in Queenstown. This very large photograph that was recently donated to the library is 1100 x 2520 millimetres and formerly hung in the Auckland Star building. Ref: Whites Aviation, Auckland, c1965, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 1411-1.

I recently attended the Cartoons, Comics and Caricatures: Evidence or Ephemera? symposium held on the 3rd May 2014 at the University of Auckland. I spent a fascinating day listening to a diverse array of speakers drawn from the cartoon world (Alan Moir), academia (University of Auckland and Victoria University of Wellington) and libraries/archives (Alexander Turnbull Library (ATL) including the NZ Cartoon Archive). Ref: William Bricknell Gibbs, He's (H) all there at Rat catching, no location, c. 1880s, Auckland Libraries  Heritage Collections , 661-4   Alan Moir's talk gave a good overview of political cartoons both within and outside of newspapers. He noted that cartoons are valuable because they reflect opinions and ideas over the course of history. Good cartoons he says, are those which feature few words but are still incredibly powerful and use metaphor to good effect. It's worth noting that many cartoons don't make sense or work outside of their country of or...

If you were intrigued by the image of the tapa cloth book included two posts ago, then read on … Housed in the Sir George Grey Special Collections at Auckland Central Library is one of thirty surviving, individually distinct copies of ‘A catalogue of the different specimens of cloth collected in the three voyages of Captain Cook’.  London: Printed for Alexander Shaw, 1787. Ref: 7-C1922, Sir George Grey Special Collections For more information, check out Real Gold: treasures of Auckland City Libraries . Other copies can be found at the Alexander Turnbull Library and the British Museum .