Unique jars of quince jelly and paste are up for sale on Trade Me, offering Kiwis the chance to help fund a visitor centre at the childhood home of legendary author Janet Frame.
In the 1930s, Frame grew up in a modest railway cottage on Eden Street in Ōamaru.
The home is now a museum, and cottage trust chief executive Chloe Searle told 1News: “When people walk through the doors of 56 Eden Street, it’s like they're stepping back in time, and the Frame family could have just been popping down to the shops.
"Janet’s someone we should celebrate and remember, because she came from a humble working-class background and really had this vision and belief in herself and, despite some pretty incredible obstacles in her way, was able to achieve at an incredible level."
The Trade Me auction is part of a fundraising push by the Janet Frame Eden Street Trust, to convert the house’s old garage into a globally-recognisable visitor centre.
A Givealittle fundraising page will also go live in early July.
Searle said they have an overall funding goal of $600,000 to build the centre, and the auction is one way they’re hoping to raise funds.
"It’s a hard thing to put a value on a jar of Janet Frame quince jelly."
The jelly and paste are made with quinces picked at the house, and the labels are signed by three of Janet Frame's most famous supporters.
They include former PM Helen Clark; film director Jane Campion, who directed the 1990 film of Frame’s three-volume autobiography; and rockstar-turned-author Shayne Carter of Straitjacket Fits fame, who was a writer in residence at her home.
Campion said: “There’s an opportunity to actually visit Janet’s childhood home in Ōamaru in Eden Street, and I think that's just so fantastic to be able to go there and be a child again where Janet was a child.”
The garage at 56 Eden St is currently an office, and the initial visitor centre design concept features the instantly-recognisable shape of an upside-down open book as its roof.
The fruit for the jelly and paste was picked from the same tree Janet Frame would have picked from and was cooked on the house's restored coal range.
Former trustee Alison Albiston told 1News: "She was quite a shy person, but she was really incredibly excited … fancy anybody thinking of restoring her childhood home."
Albiston said the author's main focus was having a coal range returned to the kitchen. She often spoke with Frame when the house was first being restored from near dereliction in the early 2000s.
"In Janet’s words, you didn’t have to go away to have an adventure all you needed was a wood box beside the coal range and a good book — and you had your adventure."
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