01/09/26
Featured:
Philip Hudson
Philip Hudson has been working with Cook Islands master carver Robbie Teremoana Atatoa and Royal Museums Greenwich as part of the AHRC-funded "Making the Museum" project, reproducing a Mangaian toki - a ceremonial adze - held in the RMG archive collection.
Toki like this one left Mangaia in numbers over the 19th century, through missionary-era removals and a later export trade and now sit in museum collections from London to Berlin to Vancouver - far from the island and the carving tradition that produced them. Robbie has been seeking out these dispersed artefacts, and the project asks what digital heritage tools can contribute to that reconnection.
The toki was captured through photogrammetry in the museum's archive store, 3D printed, and hand-finished with the fibre lashing - a craft no printer can replicate - bound by Robbie himself. The reproduction travels with him to New Zealand: a faithful, handleable copy back within reach of its tradition, while the original remains in Greenwich.