Dunbar Sloane flagpole “probably fake” - historian

AUT University History Professor, Dr. Paul Moon, has warned that an item being sold by tender by auctioneers Dunbar Sloane this August, as almost certainly a fake.

The item – described as a “Piece of Wooden Flagstaff Cut Down by Hone Heke” is part of the Ranfurly Collection, and was first put up for auction by Dunbar Sloane in March, but withdrawn because of concerns about its provenance.

Moon, who wrote the first full biography of Hone Heke, says his research reveals that the piece of wood being put up for tender is highly unlikely to be from any of the flagpoles Heke and his men felled.

In a letter to Dunbar Sloane in May this year, Dr. Moon wrote that “as yet, there is still nothing to connect the piece of wood from the Ranfurly collection directly with any of the flagpoles chopped down at Russell in the mid-1840s.” and concluded that “that the piece of wood proposed for auction cannot, with any certainty, be said to have been a part of any of the flagpoles Heke or his men felled in the 1840s in Russell.”

“There are too many unanswered questions to allow anyone to be certain about its provenance”, Dr. Moon says. “It comes from the Earl of Ranfurly collection, which dates from the around the turn of the twentieth century. As far as I can tell, there is nothing available about this item’s history pre-dating 1897 – more than fifty years after the flagstaff at Russell was felled”.

Dr. Moon points to the lack of documentary history for the piece of wood as a serious concern: “For an object of such historical significance, it should have been referred to in someone’s diary, or in a letter, around the time it was collected from where it was felled. Yet, there is no mention of it at all for half a century. This makes its sudden appearance around the 1900s dubious to say the least”, he says.

ENDS

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