The consignment at John Nicholson includes two hei tiki, 17 Maori fishing lures, a comb or ‘heru mapara’, three nephrite ear pendants and two balls of flax fibre.
The collection is the remnants of a shipment of artefacts sent back to England from New Zealand by Philip Hansen King (1813-80). A letter, discovered by descendants of the King family, details the shipment back to Chipping Norton in May 18, 1837.
King was the son of John King, one of three lay missionaries sent on the first mission to New Zealand in 1814 under the direction of the Anglican church in New South Wales.
John King and his wife Hannah stayed in New Zealand to have 12 children.
