Ngai-tahu artist and the spirit of pounamu

Press, 20 July 1984, Page 13

Ngai-tahu artist and the spirit of pounamu

HONE EDWARDS

Four years ago, 42-year-old Mike Mason realised the magic in his hands. “Today they talk,” he says, as he sits among tool-boxes, suitcases, and household castaways, carving in his Diamond Harbour garage. The gem is pounamu — greenstone. There are chunks of the stuff scattered around the place. Some are natural slabs; others with a man-made edge sit on ledges and tables. There are dark greens, almost black, pale greens, deep rich greens, and a chalky green with no lustre.

“The best type to work is the rare milky-pale green inanga. It’s beautiful,” he says. “But, the best piece is the piece you like.” The first step of the carving process is to select your stone and cut off a slab with a diamond-edge circular saw. It’s a deafening stage. Over a glass-plated desk lamp, the translucent secrets of the pounamu are revealed. Each has its own unique grain which closes the truth of the’ Ice Age. It was a period when stone like the pounamu fell prey to the frustrations of mother nature, and was wedged between the jaws of giant glaciers. Most stones were crushed, but some just twisted, like the durable greenstone. The twisted grain is all that is left of that age. “Each piece of greenstone is different,” he says, as he gently rubs a dry piece and moistens it with his fingers.

The crusty surface suddenly leaps at you transformed, full of

“mauri,” the essence of the inanimate, the life principle of the living, the spirit of talisman. This is the preciousness that makes the pounamu, to the Maori, what jade is to the Chinese. Having examined the stone, Mike Mason traces an outline from one of his many designs. Many of the designs are motivated by his Australian wife, Desley, but a lot are reflections of patterns he sees around him. “Mother nature has more designs than any book,” he says, as he cuts out the shape, again on the circular saw.

Then it’s to the drill for shaping. Closing your eyes you would think you were back in the dentist’s seat with the whine of these modern day carving tools. Although the smell is missing, the water is there spraying from the drill. It gives light to. a murky pathway, as the industrial diamond head grinds and spins 55,000 times a minute. . “Greenstone is hard,” he says, between revs, “but it is so sensitive.” Without the' water as a cooling agent the stone would burn, and the piece would be ruined. Only diamond has the strength to cut through the greenstone.

The final shaping and polishing is manual. The individual flair completes the arduous task. His ancestors used stone, and sand. He uses a type of oiled sandpaper. But the energy is dissipated with patience, hours of it. It’s hard to. imagine that the ornate beauty of the final product started as a piece of river rock. “Straight after a rainstorm is the

best time to search for this baby, .because it shines. Back home you can see it 50 yards away,” he says, reminiscing about the homestead at Arahura, on the West Coast. Of Ngai Tahu descent, Mike Mason bathed as a child in the ancestral waters of the Arahura River. For the Maori, the all but impenetrable gorge a few miles north of Hokitika is the homeland of this natural resource.

“My people told me two things: never throw a piece of greenstone because it is the spirit of your ancestors and never eat food on the river — it’s tapu, you know,” he says, rather cautiously. Although it happened late in life, it was inevitable that Mike Mason discovered his talents, having been nurtured in what some might say

was the perfect environment — Arahura. (The name literally means ara: path; hura: to discover.) His father and grandfather were both carvers of wood. As a child Mike said he mucked around carving, but not in wood, like his forefathers, nor in the stone he used to lug out of the river on his shoulders. “We didn’t have much but we had soap, the old Taniwha brand of bar soap,” he says. The skill lay dormant for 42 years before the seeds of his childhood days took root. He is the only greenstone carver in the South Island of Ngai Tahu descent. Today, the long-awaited carving style of Mike Mason is unique. He relates an intangible experience. “One day as I was carving at a

greenstone exhibition, an elderly Maori woman came up and watched me. An hour later she went around and picked out all of my pieces. That blew me out.” One of his aunts speaks proudly of his achievements. “I have waited for 91 years for this to happen, for one of my own to carry on the treasures of our ancestors, and now my dream has come true.” Mike Mason loves his wdrk. “Carving in greenstone is very therapeutic,” he says. This fits in nicely with his sense of professionalism because he knows that the final product is the result of what you put into it. “The most frustrating part is when it breaks after 60 hours of sweat and patience. But I’ve never thrown it against the wall,” he

This discipline and determination has won him national acclaim. Last December, he was commissioned to carve a greenstone plaque which was presented to the New Zealand Railways Corporation. The carving took 768 hours to complete and now hangs in the main foyer of the inter-island ferry, the Arahura. It is one of the largest examples of Maori-carved greenstone in existence.

The carving depicts the legend associated with the origin of this culturally important stone in Maori theology.

When it was presented, the Ngai Tahu people, his people, swelled with pride. “It was like 5001 b of whitebait coming up the river,” he said. “West Coasters would know.”