Anthony Savill, comes from a career as a curator, administrator and exhibition organiser at the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, New Zealand. He has had a lifetime interest in early exploration and the historical documentation of human history and culture. This interest was reinforced while working in the Museum of Natural History, London and also at the Histoire Naturelle de Paris studying the Natural History specimens collected on Captain Cook’s voyages.

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More recently, he has spent many years traveling on his canal boat through England, France, Holland, Belgium and West Germany collecting many of the items that will be displayed in this exhibition.

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He also descends from a long line of shipping entrepreneurs who established the Shaw-Savill Shipping Line in 1865 which had a long association with New Zealand for over 100 years. The company was responsible for bringing many immigrants to New Zealand and its ship, the Dunedin, was the first to take frozen cargos of meat from New Zealand to the United Kingdom. The only sailing ship belonging to the Company that survives today is the Edwin Fox which is now in a museum in Picton.

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Anthony has had a number of exhibitions throughout New Zealand in Auckland, Wellington and Canterbury. His work is represented both overseas and in New Zealand private collections and in the National Archives in Wellington.