A rare piece of art-history furniture featuring elephant ivory inlays could be destroyed because its paperwork arrived in New Zealand late.
Known as the 'Pompeiian Cabinet', the sideboard was made by Johann Levien for the 1862 Exhibition in South Kensington, London.
The cabinet was purchased by emerging Auckland collector Patrick Soanes, but it was seized by NZ customs because of incomplete paperwork when he had it shipped to New Zealand.
Photo: Supplied
Furniture historian William Cottrell claims Soanes had done all the paperwork, but it all came down to a missing rubber stamp on the British end.
"What had originally happened was that Patrick had declared there was ivory in it, but a paperwork problem at the shipping end in London meant that that document wasn't completed."
He says the paperwork got sent to an empty warehouse and then returned to London, but by the time the cabinet turned up, the document had expired.
"The cabinet was shipped out here and the paperwork arrived after lockdown had started, so it never got delivered to the warehouse with the cabinet, and then that paperwork got returned, it had expired, even though it was incomplete and British customs had cleared the cabinet for export anyways."
However, Department of Conservation (DOC) national compliance manager Marta Lang argues that is not quite what happened.
She acknowledges Soanes had a permit but claims he didn't present it to border officials when it left the UK.
"So regrettably, this cabinet was illegally exported from the UK. His permit also had to be physically presented when the Cabinet arrived to New Zealand in March last year and it wasn't, so it was also illegally imported into New Zealand."
So he emailed NZ officials to let them know the cabinet was en route but without its permit and it hadn't been endorsed, she says.
"We said get the original permit to New Zealand as soon as possible. He sent it by royal mail instead of international courier and the cabinet a month later ... the permit had not arrived."
DOC says it has seized the cabinet in the interests of protecting endangered species, under the Trade in Endangered Species CITES agreement.
"My team approached the UK to see if it would be possible to issue a replacement permit, and the UK CITES authority refused to issue new documentation because they considered the cabinet had been illegally exported," Lang says.
Dr Cottrell says the problem now is the British won't allow it to be re-imported for the correct paperwork to be completed and NZ customs won't allow it in either, because of the ivory.
"It's a 160 something year old cabinet, no elephants have been hurt in the process, and the cabinet was totally happy when it was in London and suddenly it's 'contaminated, radioactive' thing ... and I'm just really furious about this, it's just inexplicable.
"At the height of [Johann Levien's] career, he had royal appointments, he had royalty as patrons, he was absolutely going from Wellington to the top of the game of cabinet making. This is the last we know of his work, it's a hugely important piece.
"The cabinet itself is in jeopardy ... there is this one and only [piece]."
The deadline is Friday for officials to make a decision on what to do next. DOC's Marta Lang says options were being discussed with Soanes.
"We do really want to find a resolution to this situation. The first major option is that the item could be accepted by a museum or by an educational institution or some public entity engaged in caring for heritage, so our law allows for this."
Another option was for a skilled craftsman to remove the cabinet's two ivory figurines, she says.
However, Dr Cottrell argues museums won't easily take something like that.
"This is just naive to assume you can just donate it as easily as that. The other thing is once you remove those ivory figurines, I mean this is like doing kidney surgery on your kitchen table. This is a skilled job. I'm capable of doing this but it's not a thing you can do in a warehouse.
"But by doing this, you're chopping up an artwork ... it's not like this ivory can be used for anything else."
