Moko; or Maori Tattooing

ROBLEY, Major-General # 1470 London : Chapman & Hall, 1896. Quarto, gilt-lettered brown cloth with moko decoration, faint shelf-number to spine, minor rubbing at edges and short splits to head and foot of spine, photographic frontispiece, 180 illustrations and photographs, Tate Central Library bookplate on front pastedown and stamp on verso of title-page, a very good copy with many pages yet unopened. Horatio Gordon Robley (1840-1930) was a soldier, artist, and collector. He arrived in New Zealand in 1863 and while stationed in the country drew an unprecedented number of sketches of Maori life. Moko or Maori Tattooing is his magnum opus. His acknowledged objective was to put together a text to support the specialised record he had drawn of tattoo patterns. Robley also had a significant personal collection of mokomokai, or preserved Maori heads with moko design. When he returned to England in 1908 he offered to sell his collection of heads to the government of New Zealand, they declined, and the collection eventually went to the American Museum of Natural History. In 1998 these human remains were repatriated to New Zealand. Very rare, a fine copy of this important early work.