Auckland Museum - Carried Away

The bag
reveals as much
as it conceals.

Guided by a curiosity for the stories told by objects that are overlooked or dismissed, Grace Lai is interested in seeking out the web of connections between material and immaterial culture. This philosophy was developed during her time as an Alphawood Scholar at SOAS University of London.

Today, Grace is an art historian and curator at Auckland Museum, where she leads the exhibition, curation, and development of the Applied Arts and Design Collection. Currently, her research is focused on expanding the collection and on the discourse of contemporary New Zealand practitioners which has seen her get carried away by bags.

Handbags, plastic bags, backpacks, chatelaines, kete, briefcases, inr, misers purses, basikete, and medicine bags these multiple forms reflect the bags diverse uses across many cultures.

But whats the social and historical significance behind this universal object we tote about dayto day? Who carries a bag? And who doesnt? What do we put in them? And how do we unpack their value and meaning?

The exhibition Carried Away: Bags Unpacked features more than 150 bags from Auckland Museums Applied Arts and Design Collection, a nationally significant research archive of works by key makers and designers from New Zealand and abroad, alongside key objects from the History, Taonga Mori, Pacific, and Ethnology collections. This book serves as both a visual catalogue of the exhibition and an exploration of the symbolism and power behind bags.

Contents

Foreword

Dr David Gaimster, Auckland Museum
Chief Executive

Like pottery, the bag is synchronous with the emergence of human civilisation. Since human beings began making tools they have required bags to transport them. Archaeology has revealed that before the development of settled agricultural communities, nomadic hunter-gatherers made bags from animal skins or plant materials to carry their tools, weapons, and personal adornments between waterholes. The body of tzi, the Copper Age hunter found preserved in the ice of the Tyrolean Alps, was accompanied by two woven baskets used to carry his wilderness survival toolkit and food. Bags are prominent in the earliest graphic depictions of people and gods as both utilitarian and symbolic objects. In the Ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian worlds the gods are often shown carrying the cosmos in a bag. The woven baskets of Mori retain this duality of meaning, combining highly evolved craft production with the spiritual association of the basket as the holder of our knowledge about the world.

Founded in 1852, the Auckland Museum was established as an encyclopaedic collecting institution dedicated to the study of specimens illustrative of the Natural History of New Zealand also, Weapons, Clothing, Implements of New Zealand, and the Islands of the Pacific. Bags have been collected from the outset and they proliferate today across our History, Applied Arts and Design, Taonga Mori, and Pacific collections. As a disposable artefact combining both utility and art, the bag has changed continually in its design and decorative treatment, making it a focus for the study of historical material culture and contemporary social attitudes. Today the bag is both fashion icon and political statement. Few objects are more intimately associated with personal identity.

Although only a snapshot of the Museums holdings, the selection curated in Carried Away: Bags Unpacked ranges widely from an embroidered purse made in 18th-century England, probably brought by settlers as an heirloom, to the bags being made by designers and master weavers in contemporary New Zealand and the Pacific. Kete (Mori woven baskets) feature prominently and illustrate the continuing strength of our indigenous craft weaving tradition. As Grace Lai writes in her provocative introduction to this selection, the bag, although so visible, has often been misaligned in history. A bag is not just a bag. As material history, the bag provides a unique insight into the experience and influence of colonialism, consumerism, gender politics, and whakapapa in New Zealand and beyond.

Proverbial baggage

Grace Lai

Think handbag and I doubt you imagine a mans handheld leather travel bag. Since the 19th century, the handbag has been perceived exclusively as an extension of a womans arm. Just ask Google. Typing handbag into the image search bar brings up a gallery of bags in pink, with a roomy body and characteristic double handles. No backpacks or duffle bags in sight. Women and ladies are returned by the search engine algorithm as the top two most popular words associated with the handbag, indicating that today the collective understanding of the handbag is gendered, and it is female.

This perspective became apparent when we began our overview of the bags in Auckland Museums Applied Arts and Design Collection, which the exhibition Carried Away: Bags Unpacked draws upon. Handbags dominated the collection. Yet a bag can be much more than a handbag. So how does one challenge this legacy? This calls for a disruption, or two. But, before we begin, lets start by unpacking the name.

The Oxford Dictionary defines a bag as a flexible container with an opening at the top, used for carrying things. It also lists a womans handbag and a piece of luggage as examples two types of carrier that sit at opposite ends of the spectrum of form and function. Yet the handbag and luggage share an entangled history. The word handbag initially described handheld leather bags carried by men during travel, sharing a similar meaning to the word luggage, which came to reference any container that transported personal belongings. When women began to travel unaccompanied in the Victorian era, the soft drawstring reticules they carried were soon treated to a makeover.

Born from a domestic textile tradition, the reticule was typically made from luxurious silk or velvet for the wealthy, while cotton offered a more affordable option. All would have been decorated with detailed embroidery or beading as a demonstration of the womanly skills that spoke to a ladys eligibility for marriage. This evening bag (above left) exemplifies a Victorian reticule that would have been owned by an affluent woman, with its striking crimson velvet body dripping in silver beadwork that fans out into a star pattern, complete with alluring fringing. Most intriguing is the internal lining, a shocking mix of mulberry and mint silk (see ) complete with contrasting bows this could have been handstitched by the owner herself. The delicate disposition of reticules limited them to the home or evening parties and rendered them quite unsuitable for women out in a public space.