EUROPEAN FIGURES in WOOD CARVING

Te Ao Hou, July 1956, Page 40

EUROPEAN FIGURES in WOOD CARVING Left Pakeha figures in meeting house panels are very rare; perhaps this one is unique. It belongs to the Turanganui o Kiwa meeting house near Manutuke, opened in January 1883. All the carvings in this house relate to early settlement of Poverty Bay. Billy Brown with his dog was one of the first pakeha settlers in the Bay and in a way completes the story. The house has been fully described by W. J. Phillipps in ‘Carved Maori Houses of the Eastern Districts of the North Island.’ Dominion Museum Records, Vol. 1. No. 2, 1944. Below Africans, like the Maori, were accomplished woodcarvers and interpreted their European contacts much in the same way as the carving from Manutuke. Left: A missionary dressed in austere clothes and reading his Bible. (Belgian Congo.) Rijksmuseum voor volkenkuade, Leiden. Right: Queen Victoria portrayed with great majesty and motherliness. (West Africa)—Berkeley Galleries, London, Reproduced from UNESCO Courier.