Anna K.C. Petersen: New Zealanders at Home: A cultural history of domestic interiors 1814-1914

By MARGIE THOMSON

On family outings to the Wellington Museum I would always make my way as quickly as possible to the most exciting part: the reconstructed rooms of the early settlers.

I suppose the attraction was wonderment at the exotic combinations of fabrics and hand-crafted furnishings, the jumble of old-fashioned furniture, the sense that someone lived here but had just stepped out for a moment, the nostalgia and regret that you could never, quite, touch these exhibited lives of long ago.

All those feelings await you in the pages of this fascinating book. While the overall design is a little unimaginative, the text is wide-ranging and highly contextual (rather than simply descriptive) and explains much about the way both Maori and Pakeha chose or were forced to live in that century of contact.

It is a highly graphic work, full of drawings and old photos that inspire that same curious nostalgia and enchantment, the only disappointments being the unavoidable absence of photos of much other than public rooms - drawing rooms, dining rooms and sometimes kitchens - and of course colour.

Such is the price of authenticity, and Petersen comments that the surviving pictorial record is biased in favour of the urban middle-class of English descent. Nevertheless, she presents a captivating insight into the evolution of Maori and Pakeha domestic environments and society.

University of Otago Press

$49.95