CARVINGS FROM WAITARA

Taranaki Daily News, 13 October 1930, Page 6

CARVINGS FROM WAITARA

FOUR SPECIMENTS TAKEN AWAY.

MR, T. HEBERLY’S RECENT VISIT.

Mr. T. Heberly, the well-known carvef on the staff of the Dominion Museum, ' recently visited Waitara to investigate further the matter of Taranaki Maori carvings, says the Wellington Post, and ho has brought back with him four very remarkable pieces of work which encourage him to think that the first ■school of carving among the Maori peb- < pie originated in the Taranaki district. 1 The samples obtained from the Maoris are three pares (carved-for placing over doorways and windows), and a slab of pataka, and from what is known of them it would appear that all had been rescued from the swamps around Waitara over' 50 years ago. 1 - ; ■ Mr./Heberly explained to a Post re-, porter that the greatest insult which a conquering tribe could offer to the vanquished was to tear down and spit upon their carvings, so that if defeat was, certain, as had been the case once in Taranaki when the Waikatos were on the warpath, all carvings would be torn down by. the ’tribe .themselves to forestall the enemy, and thrown into the swamps. Mr. Heberly said he believed that the Waitara swamps, if thoroughly searched, would reveal many more carvings of as much interest and antiquity as those he had brought to Wellington.’ 1 I ‘ Two of the pares show the one-eyed manaia figure (a bird’s head with a human body)', and there is a strange interlocking of arms and legs which does not appear in other Maori carvings, though there is said to be some parallel for it in Hindu work. The faces on the pataka slab are cup-faced, the mouth being small, compared , with the head, and another feature which leads to belief in its great age is the eel-shaped bodies of the figures. The fourth of the carvings (which, incident- . ally, the museum authorities have bse.n, endeavouring to obtain for the past two ' years), is another pare, unique |m several respects.- There is what might be described as a “bead and cross” design running through it, though the old spiral work is still there as well, and the three heads, especially the [Central one, have a more sombre expression than is usually connected with Maori portraitare in. carving. . . • ’ I Mr. Elsdon Best, commenting ">n tbo, carvings, said that they were, extremely interesting and certainly old. Lt was very difficult to say now whether they were pre-European or not. The Maoiis had had iron tools since . 1769, so that the carvings could have.been made with those rough iron tools and still I<X>k very old to-day. He. was inclined, however, to think that these particular carvings had been done with stone tom-J, but he certainly would, not say definitely Another point of interest about them was that they differed so much from the carrings of the East Coast.