11/16 Cruise, Bay of Islands, New Zealand - Part 2

November 16, 2014

Bay of Islands, New Zealand - Part 2

Pompallier Museum

Just the two of us started the tour with our guide, Tracy.  She told us the tour was going to be 90 minutes and we almost left.  The time flew and it was one of the best tours/lectures we have heard!

The ground level walls of the building were made of rammed earth using this type of form.

She explained the leather tanning process and more people joined the tour.  The leather was needed to bind the books.

Russ tried out one of the tools used to make the leather supple.

Tracy explained the printing process.  

Bishop Pompallier wrote the texts in Maori then had them checked by Maori chiefs before sending them to the printer.  Jean Yvert, the mission printer, took the individual lead printers type, shown above, and arranged it into words

A page of type was arranged within a wrought iron frame and then fixed in place with wooden blocks and wedges.

Tracy chose Russ to print a page

He's a natural!

Then she explained the book binding process.

I think that producing nearly 40,000 books in just ten short years was an amazing feat considering they started with nothing.  

Bishop Pompallier learned the Maori language and gained the Maori's trust.  Then he purchased land, built buildings, built a leather tannery, assembled a printing press from France and then started making the books written in the Maori language.

By the end of the tour there were at least twenty of us listening to Tracy.

Amazing!