A short history of the ceramic buildings

By early 1985, Air New Zealand was a growing airline. It was operating 747 Jumbo jets from Auckland to London via Los Angeles and was keen to offer a First Class service second to none. Taking a lead from the successful KLM use of miniature houses in its premium classes, Air New Zealand decided to promote New Zealand history in a similar manner.

A small company, "Cerographics" from the sleepy township of Glen Eden, nestled in the hills on Auckland's west coast, was given the job of designing and producing the buildings. Unlike KLM who had over 60 different houses, Air New Zealand finally agreed on 6 designs, that by the clever use of differing transfers, would provide 11 different buildings. Unforeseen circumstances actually meant that, by reversing 2 of the transfers, there were finally 13 variations.

A common misconception is that the buildings were manufactured by the famous Crown Lynn pottery, in New Lynn, a busy suburb in West Auckland, just down the road from Cerographics. This in fact is wrong ! The items were made by a small pottery in the nearby suburb of Henderson.

The buildings were filled with 50ml of blended "Port Nicholson" New Zealand whisky. The chimneys were cork stoppered and covered with wax. The actual contents were filled by a keen band of supporters at the Port Nicholson Whisky club in Wellington. As a "thankyou", there were even special transfers provided to the club members. These were applied to small number of buildings and a complete set presented to each club member. These are obviously extremely rare!

The final product began to appear on Air New Zealand flights late in 1985, but were to be short lived and, by February 1986, were all but discontinued. Perhaps it was the difficulty in actually removing the wax and then fighting with the cork that made these novelty items very short lived. Cabin crew found them to be so unpopular that many were left discarded on seats. Not wishing to waste them, unwanted buildings often found their way home with the crew.

Unsubstantiated rumour has it that, in early 1986, Air New Zealand had all remaining stocks destroyed. Crates of them were loaded onto trucks and taken from the 'Bonded' warehouse at Mt. Wellington, to the Greenhithe rubbish dump. There, under Customs supervision, the boxes were crushed beneath the tracks of bulldozers and covered with soil, possibly never to see the light of day again.

Unlike the KLM houses, the Air New Zealand buildings were not particularly pretty. They were meant to represent the Colonial past and thus, were cream and brown in colour, not a particularly nice combination. Perhaps it is for this reason that the buildings did not attract the attention of collectors. Often they were viewed as 'dust collectors' and were discarded or mishandled by many. Likewise, Air New Zealand Cabin crew, who probably held a lot of them, would often discard the buildings during the occasional company purge on 'contraband' items.

Additionally, being porous, it was not uncommon for the whisky to evaporate over time. This can be seen by the presence of a brown 'patina' on the roof. It is therefore quite possible for an item to be completely sealed and yet, contain no whisky.

Thus, whereas in the early 21st century they could be found in many antique dealers' for a mere NZD20, by 2003 they had become quite sought after items. This could possibly be attributed to the growing use of Internet auctions whereby anyone could sell virtually anything, even the old 'dust collectors' ! What suprised everyone was how sought after they had become. The highest price paid for one was NZD252 for an (opened) original complete box of "The Forge" sold on the New Zealand Trademe site.

The future is unknown but one thing is certain, they are not making any more and so these little pieces of memorabilia can only but become even more collectable.