BASKET WEAVING

Te Ao Hou, Summer 1953, Page 36

BASKET WEAVING Last October, two males were bold enough to surprise a party of ladies of the Maori Women's Welfare League at Te Kuiti on the pretext of wanting to know something about weaving. One of the males, for obvious reasons, has to remain anonymous, but the other was Mr John Ashton, a photographer working for Te Ao Hou. Mrs Tumohe, the lady of the house, received them kindly and most hospitably, and the pictures on these pages are a record of the methods used by Mrs Rangi Hetet, one of New Zealand's champion weavers, in making a simple basket. At least, she called it simple. The ladies also showed us their real masterpieces (photographed a little further on). In comparison to these, the demonstration basket was, of course, very modest. Still, one has to begin somewhere.

While Mrs Hetet was making her basket, the other ladies were busy on various projects. Mrs Tira Tumohe started off a whariki and Mrs Te Koi Moera produced a little food basket (kono). Meanwhile we were told many trade secrets. We were also rather struck by a story of a lady whose life was saved by a kono. Her husband, the chief Tapana, had been told she had been unfaithful to him and would have killed her, had not Tapana's other wife, who knew she was innocent, told her that her life was in danger and saved her by a remarkable trick. She threw all the kono of the village into the Waikato River, pretending they were dirty. When the river was covered with the little green baskets, she swam across, her head covered by another kono, so that nobody could see her. The description of basket making that follows here is based partly on what the ladies told us and partly on the account in Te Rangi Hiroa's The Coming of the Maori.