Craftsmen and pioneers

Press, 29 May 1982, Page 16

Craftsmen and pioneers

The Pioneer Craftsmen of New Zealand. By G. L. Pearce Collins, 1982. 256 pp. $29.95. (Reviewed by John Wilson) This admirable work concerns itself with how pioneer New Zealanders met their needs for different articles when things were done by hand. It casts a wide net, geographically and in terms of the different crafts discussed. It brings New Zealand's past to life in much the same way as good local histories do. By shining a light on New Zealand's "local” past from a general quarter it complements local histories. In such histories we read often of different craftsmen; what they actually did is usually -taken for granted, as it was, indeed, at the time. “Pioneer Craftsmen,” by not taking the “obvious” for granted, has created a special place for itself on New Zealand bookshelves. Its range of "crafts” discussed is sometimes disconcerting — from boots to bridges, from a small wooden bucket to a large stone building. The author is, however, careful with his definition: he sees a craftsman as a worker skilled in using tools who makes articles by hand and carries out (or could in the case of, say, a bridge builder who. would have had men working under him) .the whole operation himself. Even where the definition of what a craftsman is seems sometimes rather elastic, it is clear that there is a gulf between those whose activities Mr Pearce describes and a labourer or assembly line worker.

Problems of definition soon fade as the reader becomes immersed in the best passages of the book — the clear, succinct descriptions of how craftsmen did different tasks, such as making a boot by hand, fitting an iron tyre onto a wooden wheel or casting iron. The complexity of, and skill required to perform, different craft operations will simply astound many readers. A careful selection of old photographs and other illustrations, supplemented by attractive modern sketches, mostly of items of equipment, make the book informative viewing as well as reading. Although the best passages of the book are the careful descriptions of what craftsmen did and what tools they used to do it, material on social and economic themes can also be found in it. The supplanting of colonial craftsmen by factory hands, for example, appears as an interesting theme which more analytical historians could well take up. The Dunedin Exhibition of 1865, to which a final chapter is devoted, is seen as a high point of colonial craftsmanship, but also the point at which the scales are beginning to tip, although very many crafts were practised long beyond that date, some to the present and some to enjoy a latter-day revival. The emphasis in the book, however, is on the middle decades of the nineteenth-century. Mr Pearce, it must be observed, is a craftsman in his own right. He has taken the same care with his language as the craftsmen of whom he has written took with their tasks.