Author(s): Peter Entwisle

Rotorua Books

This ground-breaking book explores the life of New Zealand's first art dealer and also solves the mystery of his death at Murdering Beach, Otago Heads, in December 1817. William Tucker is long known to have inaugurated the retail trade in preserved Maori heads and is believed to have been the instigator of the sealer's war in the south, which extended from 1810 to 1823. Documents discovered in 2003 show that this ws not the case, but that he did live at Whareakeake, Murdering Beach, Otago Heads, where it seems he exploited the export trade of made-to-demand greenstone hei-tiki, thus becoming the country's first resident art dealer. The book is throroughly researched and written to contextualise local events in Australasian and wider history, and contains much previously unpublished information.