TE WAI WHAKA ATA – THE MIRROR

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 250, 22 October 1938, Page 7 (Supplement)

TE WAI WHAKA ATA - THE MIRROR

Some Maori Ornaments

It was in a waka huia that the Maori dandy kept his most treasured ornaments. This "trinket box" was long and shallow, with a flat, countersunk lid. It was the work of an artist who, with his stone tools, had hewn it from a solid block of wood. Patiently, and with the infinite skill of native craftsmen of those days, he had wrought on the surface a pattern of deep, smooth scrolls. For handles at the ends and along the centre of the lid this loving artist had carved a band of grotesque human figures. With arched bodies and outthrust tongues they writhed in a complicated pattern along the box. The carver had inlaid little rings of pawa shell for glaring eyes to enrich each figure.

Anyone who has ever seen or touched one of these carved boxes ■will be able to imagine how ius owner's fingers may have caressed it every time he lifted the lid. This Ancient work is delightful to touch, for its> mellowed brown wood is rippled with the unmistakable smoothness which has only been achieved with stone tools. They seemed to rub the pattern rather than cut it, so that no hareh angles break the twisting rhythm of the design. The Maori was ever an artist, and much of hie pride and skill was spent in adorning himself as beautifully as he could with any materials Kature provided. The waka huia of a man of rank, then, was well filled with finely made ornaments which could be proudly worn on gala days. To thrust into the knot of his smooth hair drawn high on his head he chose a tall comb. It was probably about eight inches high, made from a thin piate of bone from the sperm

OLWYN M. RUTHERFORD (Auckland Museum.)

whale's lower jaw. The high, curved crest, and the slender teeth were carved with careful patience from the one piece of bone. A very delicate and fantastic human face, so small that we have to look carefully to see its detail, was carved where it caught the upward sweeping lines into a gentle and perfect curve. Perhaps the elaborately dressed man of Captain Cook'e day, of whom an artist has left us a drawing, sometimes wore another type of comb. It must have been popular with the Maori people of former times, judg'"S L>y the number of beautiful examples which are preserved in museums. This comb was smaller than the heru paraoa, the bone comb, and was made from a number of pieces of hard wood. Each strip was worked down into a slender tooth, aijd all were bound rigidly together at the top with a firm fabric of libre lashings. The Maori wore such a comb proudly, feeling that it was a fitting ornament for his sacred head.

The man in this picture is wearing another ornament which iie valued greatly. It, too, was made from ivory. The Maori obtained a prized *tore of this material whenever he found a whale stranded on the shore, and treasured it for the time when lie could carve it into such ornaments as this. That heavy pendant adorning his neck is made from a big whale tooth, sliced down on one side and inlaid with a pair of glittering pawa shell eyes. Sir Joseph Banks noticed men proudly wearing these ivory rei paraoa, and said, "These they wear about their necks and seem to value them above everything else." Surely nothing but pride" in a much ad mired ornament could have made a man suffer such discomfort as the wearing of the rei paraoa must have caused. Perhaps his vanity was so great that he did not mind. To carrv *uch a heavy pendant, he had to wear it on a thick cord of rolled flax fibre, which must have been scratchy against his neck. To fasten it he slipped through a loop in one end a small toggle made from a section of i albatross wing-bone. I

The slender, curved pin which fastened the eloak about his shoulders was also made from the precioue ivory, and was one of the most delicate ornaments he wore. Sliced from a whale's tooth, its curve tapered to a fine, sharp point. The head was in the form of a grotesque human face in profili, carved with such delicate precision of line as we find in carving by Chinese artists. Even in such minute work the Maori carver inlaid tiny eyes of shell that still glitter greenly as the pin is moved to catch i the light. J

The waka huia held among its most important treasures shining plumes which were worn in the hair. The most highly prized were the black tail-feathers of the huia, with their snowy tips, but those from other birds were also popular, especially

those from the rare white heron. (Men adorned themselves much more elaborately than did the women, who seldom used combs and plumes, but both wore the puhoi —a large bunch of downy white albatross feathers. The big, 6nowy ball of fluff was thrust into the ear-lobe, which was pierced for the wearing of different kinds of ornaments. Banks thought they looked rather odd. but he remarked that thev made "by .o

means an inelegant appcarancc."