Case 1 2013/14: The Baden-Powell Desk by William Seuffert

Expert adviser’s statement

Reviewing Committee Secretary’s note: Please note that any illustrations referred to have not been reproduced on the Arts Council England Website

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1. Brief Description of item(s)

A secretaire with marquetry depicting the people, topography, flora and fauna of New Zealand, incorporating the then coat of arms of Major-General Baden-Powell (1857-1941, created 1st Baron Baden-Powell in 1929), and bearing a silver plaque which reads: ‘Presented to Major-General R. S. S. Baden-Powell by admirers in the province of Auckland, New Zealand, in recognition of distinguished services rendered to the Empire during the siege of Mafeking, from 13 Oct. 1899 to 17 ’. The marquetry is made of New Zealand woods, including burr totara. The secretaire measures 167 cm high, 130 cm wide and 66 cm deep. It was made by William Seuffert (1858-1943) between 1900 and 1902 in Auckland, New Zealand, with the carvings attributed to Anton Teutenberg. It is in very good condition. The carving on the centre of the top is a modern reproduction based on photographs of the original. The marquetry on the front has faded.

2. Context

When British forces relieved Mafeking (now Mafikeng) on 17 May 1900 the news was greeted with an extraordinary outpouring of celebrations throughout Britain and her colonies. In Auckland, a shilling subscription was launched to raise money for a gift in honour of Major-General Baden-Powell, who had been in charge of the besieged garrison. The money raised was used to send him two gifts: a greenstone and silver casket, and a secretaire made by William Seuffert. The Provisional Committee of the Baden-Powell Testimonial Fund wrote to Baden-Powell asking if he would accept the secretaire, and his reply confirmed his warm acceptance. The secretaire was exhibited at the Auckland Art Gallery in September 1903 before being sent to London. In London it was presented to Baden-Powell at a dinner held in November 1903. In 1904 it was exhibited at the Ironmongers’ Hall for five months (March to August), where it was visited by 7,000 people.1 Lady Olave Baden-Powell (1889- 1977) is said to have kept her ‘treasures’ in it.2

Literature:

‘Presentation to Gen. Baden-Powell’, The Times, November 14, 1903, p. 9.

Brian Peet, The Seuffert Legacy: New Zealand Colonial Master Craftsmen. The craft of Anton Seuffert & his sons William, Albert & Carl (Auckland, 2008), pp. 54-62.

Jonathan Marsden and Richard Thompson, ‘A New Zealand Masterpiece: A Marquetry Secretaire by Anton Seuffert.’ Furniture History, Vol. XLII (2006), pp. 179- 92.

Jennifer M. Ide, ‘The Ferns of the Baden-Powell Desk‘. Pteridologist (The British Pteridological Society) Vol. 3, part 4 (1999), pp. 79-86.

3. Waverley criteria

The object meets criterion 1

This object is closely connected with one of the most famous incidents in British imperial and history. It was made for and presented to the British soldier Major-General Baden-Powell, expressly to recognise his achievements at Mafeking, an event which caught the public imagination at the turn of the last century as did few others. The relief of Mafeking was celebrated throughout the British Isles at every social level. Mafeking catapulted Baden-Powell to worldwide fame which eight years later aided his founding of and recruiting for the Movement.

The object meets criterion 3

The secretaire is arguably the most celebrated surviving object associated with the siege of Mafeking, an important event which was one of the defining moments of the during the late Victorian period. The secretaire is material evidence of the importance of the event and the relationship between Britain as an imperial power and one of her most distant colonies, New Zealand.

DETAILED CASE

1. Detailed description of item(s) if more than in Executive summary, and any comments.

During the siege of Mafeking, Lady Georgiana Curzon (1860-1906) spearheaded the Mafeking Relief Fund which raised for the besieged garrison over £10,000 with donors ranging from the Princess of Wales (later Queen Alexandra) to schoolchildren in Isleworth.3 The relief of Mafeking was met with an equally enthusiastic public response. Long articles in The Times and other newspapers described street parties in London, while ‘Rejoicings in the Provinces’ included celebrations in Newcastle, Birmingham, Plymouth and Glasgow.4 These events had wide-reaching cultural influences at every social level. The Poet Laureate Alfred Austin (1835-1919) immortalised the event in his poem, Mafeking, as did the Scottish poet William McGonnigall (1825-1902) in The Relief of Mafeking. Commerative medals were struck. According to census records, approximately 200 babies born in England and Wales shortly after the relief of Mafeking were given ‘Mafeking’ either as a first or middle name.5 Nearly forty years later Hollywood used the siege and relief of Mafeking as a backdrop to the film The Little Princess (1939) starring Shirley Temple, as a means of encouraging American involvement in the Second World War.

Today in Britain there is very little physical evidence of an event so famous that the verb ‘to maffick’, meaning to celebrate both extravagantly and publicly, entered the English language.6 Although there are still over forty streets and terraces across Britain bearing the name ‘Mafeking’, there are no memorials to the event (there are over 1,000 memorials connected with the Boer War in Britain, but there are none to Mafeking, although Mafeking commemorative plaques were erected abroad, including in Australia).

Writing from the Transvaal in 1900, Baden-Powell accepted the proposed gift of the secretaire and casket from the Baden-Powell Testimonial Fund thus: ‘I am most deeply grateful and highy flattered at the generous manner in which the people of Auckland propose to show their appreciation of the manner in which we, in Mafeking, tried to do our duty. I feel most unworthy myself of being singled out to be the recipient of so handsome a present . . . I shall always regard them as a tie between Mafeking, our distant cousins over the sea, and myself’.7 The secretaire was formally presented to Baden-Powell in London by W. Pember Reeves, Agent-General of New Zealand, at the Anglo-Saxon Club on November 13, 1903, during a dinner held at the Empire Hall of the Trocadero Restaurant. According the The Times, the audience cheered when the secretaire was mentioned. Reeves told the audience: ‘Among the happier memories of the South African war none was brighter than that associated with Mafeking, which from its remoteness and long isolation from the relieving forces commanded especial sympathy, and whose gallant defender enlisted their admiration’. Baden-Powell thanked his hosts for their ‘handsome present’.8

The siege of Mafeking was one of the defining moments of the British empire during the late Victorian period. The relief of Mafeking was seen as reversing the fortunes of the and gave British morale, then at a very low ebb, a massive boost. Mafeking also propelled Baden-Powell to international fame. One result was that his military training manual, Aids to Scouting (1899), became a best-seller, being used by teachers and youth organisations. Mafeking was therefore crucial in elevating Baden-Powell’s profile, helping his successful founding of the Scouting Movement in 1908. It was also at Mafeking that a Cadet Corps of boys under fighting age were used as guards and message bearers, which Baden-Powell used as an object lesson in the first chapter of his best-selling (1908). Baden- Powell was knighted in 1909 in recognition of his distinguished military career and as founder of the Scouts. In 2002, following a UK-wide poll by the BBC, Lord Baden- Powell was ranked 13th in the list of the 100 . In April 2013 the BBC reported that around 35,000 British children were on the waiting list to become Scouts.

The Baden-Powell secretaire is closely related in style and decoration to those produced by William Seuffert’s father Anton, who made several secretaires as presentation pieces. The earliest was that made for and presented to her in 1862 in thanks for sending troops to help in the Māori Land Wars. Anton Seuffert had trained in Vienna with the firm of Leistler & Sons, and was the foreman in charge of the great bookcase presented to Queen Victoria by the Austrian Emperor in 1851, and now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The Baden- Powell secretaire is the only known secretaire made by his son William Seuffert, who had been born in London, and is considered his most important piece. The desk skilfully combines native New Zealand woods in marquetry panels which depict Māori people, New Zealand topography, flora and fauna, creating a microcosm of one of the countries that comprised the then British empire. The ferns are so accurately depicted, for example, that many of them have been identified.

2. Detailed explanation of the outstanding significance of the item(s).

The Baden-Powell secretaire marks an event of immense importance to the history of the British empire. It is a tangible relic of the siege of Mafeking, an event which affected all levels of society, but of which little evidence now remains in Britain. It was because those who raised money for the secretaire intended it to be presented to Baden-Powell, one of the most important figures in British military history, that it was sent to England. His name is still familiar to people of all age groups in Britain as the founder of the Scouting movement – its success due in part to the fame he won at Mafeking. It is the greatest achievement of a London-born maker, William Seuffert, and echoes the gift of a similar secretaire by the people of New Zealand to Queen Victoria forty years earlier, by William’s father. It displays the people, places and fauna of part of the British empire and adds to the understanding of the network of colonial relationships between , New Zealand and the ‘old country’.

Summary of related items in public/private ownership in the UK

Related items by Anton Seuffert (1815-87):

Writing desk, 1861-2, presented to Queen Victoria. Royal Collection. Table top, c.1886, Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew.

1 Peet, p. 58, lower caption. 2 Ide, p. 86. 3 “An appeal for Mafeking”, Letter to the Editor of The Times, The Times, May 14, 1900. 4 The Times, May 19, 1900, p. 12. 5 1911 England and Wales Census, www.ancestry.co.uk 6 Oxford English Dictionary, 2013, first cited in 1900. www.oed.com 7 Baden-Powell, September 2, 1900, the letter quoted and reproduced in Peet, p. 55. 8 The Times, November 14, 1903, p. 9.