MAORI CARVINGS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22346, 18 February 1936, Page 17

MAORI CARVINGS

EARLY WORK SCARCE • INFLUENCE OF STEEL TOOLS Visiting New Zealand to arrange the exchange of museum exhibits with his own country, Mr. Bohumil Pospisil, of Moravia, stated in Wellington that he was struck by the scarcity in the Dominion of early Maori carvings executed with stone tools. He said that more genuine pre-European Maori work was to he.found in English and Continental museums than in those of this country.

The writer remarked, that while there were manv very valuable examples. of early Maori work scattered throughout New Zealand, and in private collections, it seemed to him that the greater speed and easo of tho steel tools must have caused the Maoris to

almost immediately discard their stone chisels, mallets, etc., in favour of those which would not only cut quicker, but Would give sharper edges, and more scope for that plfcasing lack of convention iu Maori carving. t Referring to four panels at tlie Dominion Museum which seemed at first sight to be the same, he said one could see embellishments introduced which were evidently the result of the imagination of the carver as the work proceeded. With tho old stone tools, these ideas must have remained longer in the Bund of the carver before they could he put into execution, and were therefore, perhaps, more fully and artistically developed; but there was not the same opportunity as with stools tools for skilful fine^detail. Whether the finer details were nn :improvenient upon the art of tho Maori ae was not prepared to say, but it was easy to tell tho carvings executed with stone tools from their modern counterParts. So rapidly had the steel vogue Conie in. that he doubted if carvings With stone tools had been made in any ■Quantity tor over 100 years.