MOTH Collections

Courtesy of the Artist - Crystal Chain Gang, 2010

MARBLES

MOTH » Cat №. 078

In the letter that accompanied this donation to the Museum of True History, Mrs Betty Fenwick tells the story of how her late husband George found these marbles as a boy while fossicking around the former camp kitchen hut of the now abandoned Prisoner of War Camp in Featherston, just north of the Hutt Valley, Wellington.

  

As an adult George became curious about the history of these unusual objects and tracked down one of the former Camp guards, Percy Archibald, in an effort to shed some light on his childhood discovery.

Archibald described how the prisoners would bribe the guards to get scraps of coloured glass from the local bottle plant which they would grind by hand until they had a rough sphere.  Although they were used primarily in games as a means of passing the time,  they were also prized possessions and a hotly contested mode of currency among the prisoners. 

Courtesy of the Artist - Rachel Bell, 2010

TOOLS

MOTH » Cat №. 050

While the specific function and maker of these objects remains unknown, it is thought that they were used by a breakaway spiritual group formed at the turn of the twentieth century known as the UNSL -  the Union of New Southern Light. 

The Museum of True History has obtained personal diaries and drawings held in several key private family collections that provide basic information about the UNSL but despite gaining increasing interest from academics, there is still little known about them.