Big demand for Maori carvings

Press, 25 February 1986, Page 19

Big demand for Maori carvings

By

TESSA WARD

Less than a year after opening, the Christchurch Rikl Rang! Maori Carving Centre is having difficulty in keeping up with orders for its work. The Arts Centre outlet is the only one of its kind in the South Island. Lead carver for the centre, Riki Manuel, says that the business has developed more quickly than any of his team expected. “We thought we would be catering mainly for the tourist market but our local market has become really busy,” he says. “More than $30,000 worth of goods have been sold. The armlength wooden sculptures, flutes and bone and jade pendants are selling particularly well. “We are beginning to catch up on our own customer orders for jewellery so that we can send more to other retail outlets. Hopefully we can follow this up with more carvings for other shops.”

Riki and his team of four artists and a supervisor would like to step up the pace of their production, using their growing

experience and new machinery that they bought out of last year’s revenue. Plans for a Maori carving centre were first pinned to the drawing board when the Arts Centre Trust approached Riki and Vivian Cummings and triggered their interest in the idea.

“I was one of the two South Island pupils in a class of 30 carvers at the New Zealand Maori Arts and Craft Institute in Rotorua for three years,” the Westland-born Riki says. “If I had stayed in Rotorua I could have got carving work but I wanted to return to the Christchurch area, but I found I couldn’t get any work here. “Odd jobs for the Nga Hau E Wha Marae, lecturing at the Polytechnic, and an attempt to set up a business in the Square kept my hand in, but did not sustain me.”

Vivian Cummings was taken on as an Arts Centre employee to help supervise the centre and teach business management skills to the team of artists. Riki’s older brother, Tony, joined the team. He had no carving experience, and became the centre’s paua specialist.

The fourth member of the team when the centre opened was Malcolm Hooper, whose skills have produced some popular greenstone, bone and ivory jewellery. Each artist was employed by the Government under a work scheme and two of them have since become employed solely by the centre. Four Christchurch companies and the Rehabilitation League have also given their support to the centre. It has undertaken several large projects, including carved panels for the University of Canterbury and commercial buildings, and has a possible

carving assignment for Australia’s sister ! city of Christchurch, Adelaide. Riki says the centre sells only , authentic Maori carving which, while based on intricate traditional designs from throughout New Zealand, includes some innovative work using contemporary styles. About six months ago the centre decided to take on Bjorn Solheim, a graphic artist with some carving experience, . and Gary Winter, a keen learner. Both are employed by the Government on work schemes with good prospects of becoming employees of the centre, Riki says.

“We have got a crude form of export going, mainly in the form of orders from tourists who visit

the centre,” he says.

“The recent Te Maori exhibition in the United States has boosted American interest in our work, and we find the Italians good customers too. * >•

“So far we have found the Japanese rather timid about coming into the centre. Those who do look in, usually as a group, tend to all want the same item and we often don’t have enough of the same item on our shelves to meet their order.

“After only ten months, I am very confident about the centre providing work for more people. The day when the South Island’s own Maori carving school is opened may not be so far away either.”