SIR JOHN ILOTT

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 6, Issue 2, 1 October 1973, Page 41

SIR JOHN ILOTT

A.G.B.

1884-1973

John Moody Albert Ilott —business man, collector, patron, benefactor and administrator of numerous organisations concerned with the welfare of people as well as of cultural affairs —commands our attention for more than the customary minute of silence. This note, inadequate and incomplete in many aspects of its subject, is no more than one person’s tribute on the periphery of some of Sir John’s activities.

His father, also John Ilott, a journalist and the son of Dr John Ilott of Mount Ruby, Mallow, County Cork, Ireland, had come to New Zealand in 1883, primarily for reasons of health. He settled in Te Aroha where he was editor and managing partner of the Te Aroha and Ohinemuri News from 1884 until 1890 when he came to Wellington to join the New Zealand Times. He shortly afterwards resigned to establish his own press agency in the humbler routines of which he was later assisted by young John M. A. Ilott who carried messages by bicycle around the city. It was possibly when recovering from the effects of a serious fall from his machine that the boy’s attention was first directed to the limitations imposed on the handicapped and the disabled. He would have liked to follow his grandfather’s profession of medicine and was about to embark for England to commence studies when his father’s illness obliged him to step into the business and keep it going. From this change in direction grew the advertising agency long associated with his name.

Vigour, application and judgment in business soon gave him a little time to broaden his activities and his appreciation of New Zealand’s origins and history which led him into the Pacific region an early objective in his passion for travel. Part of this interest undoubtedly stemmed from his own friendship with his father’s friend Alexander Turnbull who, as he often recalled, had inspired him to begin collecting. During his middle life he was an eager and perceptive purchaser at auction and from dealers in New Zealand and overseas acquiring not only Pacific material but examples of early printing and illuminated manuscript. To these were added etchings and prints in which area his substantial generosity to the National Gallery is well known. An active and continuing concern for the institution which was Turnbull’s legacy made him the obvious choice for leadership of the Friends of the Turnbull Library on the Society’s establishment in 1939. He was its President until 1941 and a member of the Committee until 1966 when on appoint-

ment as Chairman of Trustees of the National Library of New Zealand he resigned. From the pencil annotations in his hand on the front endpapers of many of his books his active period of collecting was during the 1920 s when he concentrated on the development of his Pacific holdings. The main body of his collection which he sold at auction in 1951 may not have been a distinguished corpus on the scale of Webster or Fox, for, as a practical man, Ilott was more frequently concerned with the title and text than condition. It was, nevertheless the most extensive offering of Pacific books sold in New Zealand in forty years and contained a few titles still not in Turnbull. The Library, however, was able to acquire a little later some 23 early printed books which were indicative of his range of interest. This acquisition was later dwarfed by his most generous donation in 1958 of five illuminated manuscripts and other associated items (Turnbull Library Record No. 14 March 1960). One of these has subsequently been identified as a Carmelite Book of Hours ('Turnbull Library Record (n.s.) Vol. 4 No. 1 May 1971) of outstanding rarity and scholarly significance.

The writer’s first acquaintance with John Ilott was as the newly appointed Treasurer of the Polynesian Society in 1938 a role which had been thrust upon him by the Society’s slightly older Secretary, C. R. H. Taylor. John Ilott was a long-standing member of Council and during the war years when its membership dwindled to John Ilott, W. R. B. Oliver, Morris Jones, J. C. Andersen as Editor and A.G.B. by then combined Secretary-Treasurer, the latter was many times grateful for the perceptive, swift efficiency with which business was conducted and for Mr Ilott’s skill in coping both with the aspirations of the editor and the opposing dourness of the Director of the Dominion Museum. Later, as Chairman of the Trustees of the National Library and particularly as Chairman of the Trustees Committee for the A.T.L. his long-standing view that no order paper need take more than 60 minutes of a busy man’s time did create a few problems in the presentation and consideration of essential documents within the allotted span. Honours (Knighted in 1954 and Hon. LL.D. (Victoria University of Wellington in 1964)) were far from inducing any wish to sit back.

It was as Chairman of the above last-named bodies that he remains most clearly in the memories of many although then past his peak. It should be remembered that he took on these quite demanding tasks at the age of 82 and only after he had satisfied himself as a life-long friend of the Library and the loyal founder of the Friends that the formation of the National Library was in the best long-term interest of all parties. In both positions and particularly in the Turnbull Committee

he gave strong support to the Chief Librarian and to the National Librarian but there was never any question as to where his heart lay. The Alexander Turnbull Library, with other institutions will long be grateful that John Ilott was their friend.