Fur and feathers

The astonishing price paid for a single huia feather - $46k - in an auction in May came 116 years after the last confirmed sighting of the bird.
Huia, and their feathers, are considered sacred.
Overseas there are many pieces of New Zealand, either in private collections or in museums.
New Zealand was the last country on earth to be discovered. And it came with a new range of extraordinary creatures.
The feather (and fur) trades were massive. The demand for more and new exciting feathers to adorn hats or other fashion items was so large that whole species have been killed off for it. Women, after all, were not properly dressed without a hat.
Even now, Te Papa holds a number of items that would be considered extremely bad taste now, a muff made from a kiwi, another made from a Southern royal albatross.
Other museums hold similar pieces, like a muff made from a king penguin in Otago.
It was, of course, considered completely normal then and there were a number of businesses who offered the pretty bits for sale.
One was Liardet’s in Wellington.
Hector Evelyn Liardet had been born in Kent in 1827 and left England with his father and six brothers headed for Australia, landing near Melbourne at a beach that ended up being called Liardet’s beach.
For a while the family lived in tents before the father Wilbraham built a hotel and a jetty and set up business.
The family also went back and forth to New Zealand - and Hector came to Otago for the gold rush there.
He ended up in Wellington where he set up as a naturalist and a dealer in Maori curiosities - including things like feathers with his wife Elizabeth.
In 1876 he showed off the fur and feathers of New Zealand at the Philadelphia Exhibition, revealing new things to the world.
The Evening Post reported:
“The manufacture of muffs is now a local industry in Wellington. Unkind punsters might insinuate that the community was already amply supplied with muffs, but any lady who saw one of the seagull muffs manufactured by Mrs Liardet would immediately think otherwise. These muffs are made from seagull skins, the feathers being of dazzling whiteness. The birds are shot by Mr Liardet, jun., the skins preserved by Mr Liardet, sen., and manufactured into very beautiful appendages to a lady’s outdoor toilette by Mrs Liardet. They are much superior to any imported articles of the kind.”
Hector often got skins from sailors that called into the port in Wellington. In January 1875, Liardet received “130 splendid skins of albatross and mollyhawks” from the officers of the French transport ship La Vire, which had returned from the sub-Antarctic islands, along with an order for “25 sets of muffs, tippets &c” destined for Paris.
They sold their goods both locally, and internationally.
After Queen Victoria and Princess Alexandra admired their work at the Indian & Colonial Exhibition in 1886, the exhibition’s New Zealand commissioner, Julius von Haast sent Queen Victoria a muff and collarette made from the skin of a pūtakitaki, and Princess Alexandra a snowy white albatross muff. The Liardet's priced their albatross muffs for between £2 and £3.
Eventually the fur and feathers trade died out.
Hector died on November 28, 1891 and is buried in the Bolton St Cemetery.​