On December 10th at their Cardiff Saleroom, Rogers Jones Co will be holding Out of Europe, an important auction of Asian, Native and World Fine Arts. Among the artefacts to be sold are several lots originally belonging to Miss Annie Elizabeth Tookey, a young Englishwoman, who in 1860 sailed to Fiji to work there for two years as a Missionary.
The collection includes Miss Tookey’s personal effects, and an archive of fascinating letters, sent to her family from Fiji. These documents, provide a rare insight into the life of a young woman, working as a teacher of reading, writing and needlework to the wives and children of local chiefs on the island of Bau. Here she received the protection and patronage of Seru Epenisa Cakobau, the self-styled King of Fiji, and a recent convert to Christianity.
In addition to Miss Tookey’s personal archive, her collection of rare and fascinating artefacts from Fiji will also be going under the hammer on December 10th. These items include a remarkable tattooing tool, fishing implements, two headrests (one of which was said to have belonged to Cakobau himself) and two impressive lengths of Tapa cloth, made from the soaked and beaten bark of the paper mulberry tree.
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These items of Miss Tookey’s, which have remained in the possession of her family since her death, have a remarkably sound provenance; each step of every object’s long journey from Fiji to the Cardiff Saleroom is unbroken and accounted for. The context in which these letters and artefacts were produced and collected provides us with something even rarer – a miraculous survival, revealing a specific, human insight into history.
Auctioneer Philip Keith:
“It’s very rare to offer for sale ethnographic works of art from the Pacific, especially with superb provenance as is the case with the artefacts collected by the remarkable Annie Tookey, a young methodist missionary.
“Opening her humble wooden box to see her personal treasures including simple bead necklaces to fine tapa cloths and chiefly headrests was truly amazing, knowing for certain they date to her time in Fiji in the middle part of the 19th Century.
“So little survives from these times, so the opportunity to offer for sale fresh, never before seen 19th Century Fijian artefacts is extremely exciting.”
Annie Tookey’s items are expected to realise in excess of £4000. The auction takes place on December 10th.
Visit: www.rogersjones.co.uk
Feature image: THE PERSONAL EFFECTS OF METHODIST MISSIONARY MISS ANNIE ELIZABETH TOOKEY, c. 1860-1874, including her Common Prayer Book, inscribed on the flyleaf ‘Anne Bryan from her sincere friend Dr. Lady Leigh Sept. 28th 1854’, printed prayer for Lady Leigh’s son, Gilbert Leigh (who died in 1884 on the Big Horn Mountains), gilt tooled needle case, pin cushion, bone disc pin cushion, steel scissors, ribbons/edging lengths, cloth scraps, wood batons/stays, seashells and mineral specimens, small lace squares/roundels, black beaded lace veil, white lace veil, Indian silk shawl (A/F), shell bracelet (A/F), Oriental silk & bead mesh draw-string purse, several bone, coral and glass bead necklaces, tortoiseshell comb, papier-mâché paper wallet, glazed terracotta jar, all within small wood box – Estimate £100-200
1 COLLECTION POLYNESIAN ARTEFACTS/TRADE GOODS, including vegetal fibre fan with kapok border around pressed fern and gauze centre on rattan handle 45cms (h), conical basket with woven fibre sides on flaring base 120cms (h), three coils of plaited sennit, string of coloured beads, tortoiseshell scute, 24cms (l) – Estimate £50-100
3 TLINGIT POLYCHROME RATTLE TOP LIDDED BASKET, late 19th C., decorated with hourglass and lozenge motifs to the side, the top with sunburst and pinwheel motifs, 17cms (diam.) x 10cms (h) – Estimate £600-800
4 RARE FIJI TATTOO IMPLEMENT, mid-late 19th C., with triple-toothed flat bone head bound with sennit to short rattan handle, 19cms long, and a small mallet, probably a non-native associated museum curio (2) – Estimate £200-300
5 THE ARCHIVE OF LETTERS FROM METHODIST MISSIONARY MISS ANNIE ELIZABETH TOOKEY, 1860-1874, in small cotton-covered scrap book, containing photograph of a coastal settlement, watercolour of the Fiji School House where she taught, at least 44 affixed or loose autograph letters on white, pink and blue paper, mostly addressed “To my dear dear father…” being William Weightman Tookey, but also to/from other individuals, several orders for sewing accessories & cloth, money orders etc., one letter on ‘Panama, New Zealand & Australia Royal Mail Company Limited’ letterhead, another on ‘International Royal Mail Company letterhead’, one within envelope (partially missing flap), with an exercise book transcribed from the original letters by Mary Ashmore (descendant). Of interest are the photograph of Annie Tookey with baby, group photographs of the collection in the Nuneaton Museum display case, the 17 April 1860 letter written from the Wesleyan College, Westminster to Anne’s aunt, the 18th March 1861 letter from the Ship Liberator detailing the outward voyage to Sydney, the 20th July 1860 letter detailing her first impressions of the missionaries in Fiji and the small island of Bau (east of Viti Levu) where she was given a plot of land by Chief Cakobau on which was built a school to teach the local women and children to read, write and sew. Also a remarkable autograph letter, rescued from the wreck of the East India Mail steamer ‘Colombo’ (seawater stains and missing sections), written by her pupil, Adi Asenaca Kakua Vuikaba (Asenath), daughter of Chief Seru Epenisa Cakobau (1815-1883) in Fijian, and translated approximately:
“I Asenath write to you Mr Tookey (to tell) you of our land in the (…) we were darkness and know the true God but now has come to us because of the tidings of Jesus Christ, we know that (lotu) Christianity is a good thing and we rejoice to have the minister in our town, that he may tell us of our Saviour Jesus, we rejoice greatly because of this thing, and we have very good joy in having Miss Tookey in our land to teach us good things. We love her very much and always remember her every day. My letter is finished. September 4th. 1862. Bau. Fiji.”
Also, several notebooks written Annie Tookey’s descendants, several c. 1970 newspaper cuttings & photographs relating to Annie and this collection in Nuneaton Museum, book by S. E. Scholes ‘Fiji and The Friendly Isles’, magazine etc – Estimate £200-400
