JOHN TAIAPA'S LIFE AS A CARVER

Te Ao Hou, September 1959, Page 34

JOHN TAIAPA'S LIFE AS A CARVER When I was in Rotorua recently, I talked to John Taiapa, a spare quiet man who speaks without flamboyant phrases or effects but was able to tell me in simple workmanlike words about the life and art of the modern carver. Several other talented Maori carvers could have told me similar things but I have to leave them till some other time. What he told me cannot be the real story of his art: one only finds that by looking at the hundreds of Maori figures and symbolic representations that issued from his hands. He is a man who does not express his deepest thoughts in words; he uses wood instead. And in wood he expresses himself aptly and with imagination. Both he and Pine were born at Tikitiki on the East Coast. When Pine grew up he became a surveyor's chainman; he was in his late twenties when the School of Arts and Crafts opened in Rotorua. Pine Taiapa became one of the foundation students at the school together with two young men from Rotorua and two from Waikato. The director was Mr Harold Hamilton, son of Augustus Hamilton who was Director of the Dominion Museum and a noted authority on Maori art. The teacher was Rotohiko Haupapa, from Rotorua. As Pine Taiapa tells the story, this first Arawa teacher was very much a man of the old school and jealous of imparting his knowledge to men of other tribes—‘Why don't you go back farming?’ he asked Pine. But he and the two Waikato youths persevered; he got information from carvings of the East Coast and from photographs; he developed a technique of his own. Beginning of a Career It was at this period that John, the younger brother (born 1912) appeared on the scene. It was the middle of the depression; his job in the bush had just cut out, and John came to the school, not as a student, but just to help his brother. In the end they paid him five shillings a week. At the time of John's arrival the school was busy on the house ‘Te Hono ki Rarotonga’ which stands at Tokomaru Bay. This was the first house to which John Taiapa contributed as a learner. Around this time, Sir Apirana Ngata engaged a new instructor in the school to teach adze work: Eramiha Kapua from Te Teko, descendant of a famous Ngati Terawhai carving family. This teacher is remembered by both the Taiapas with much gratitude and affection. There were seven brothers in Eramiha's family who were all carvers. Between them they carved the house in the Christchurch exhibition of 1907. Eramiha Kapua himself was a strict carver of the old school who knew all the tapu observances concerning carving. He never blew the chips away, he did not allow women near the carvings, nor any smoking on the job. However, he told his young students that they would be wiser not to bother with tapu. His reason was that, not knowing precisely what the tapu was, they might easily make a mistake and that would be worse than if they did not burden their mind with it at all. Therefore, both Pine and John abandoned all idea of tapu in their work. Te Hono Ki Rarotonga was the work of five carvers; at the head Eramiha Kapua, and helping him: Pine and John Taiapa, and the two men from Waikato: Wiremu Poutapu and Waka Kereama. At that stage, the Rotorua instructor and the other two Arawa carvers left the School. The kowhaiwhai for the house was done by a European signwriter, Jack Wright, there being no qualified Maori available. The women of Tokomaru Bay did the tukutuku work themselves. The opening of this house was especially dramatic because Makea. Tinirau, paramount chief of the Cook Islands, with his party, had been invited to emphasise the importance of the link between Rarotonga and the descendants of the Horouta canoe. Makea opened the house and then asked Ngata whether he could have a similar carved meeting house in Rarotonga. Ngata asked the Cook Island chief to leave two of his men behind to learn the art of carving and so it was that Aiotua Tuarau and Wili Marama stayed in New Zealand and joined the School of Maori Arts and Crafts. The Raretonga house was never built, although money was raised for it; the project ended with the death of old Makea Tinirau. All this happened in 1934; shortly afterwards work began on the monumental Waitangi meeting house. When that was finished, in 1937, John Taiapa considered himself a fully trained carver. But not the whole of the three years after Tokomaru Bay were devoted to the Waitangi house. They were in fact exceptionally busy years for the men of the Arts and Crafts school—it was then that the house at Otaki was built, and the one at Waitara, and the Mangahanea dining hall at Ruatoria, and the Sir James Carroll Memorial Hall, and a start was also made on the carvings in the Te Aute College assembly hall. The Travelling Circus The bewildering variety of jobs was part of Sir Apirana's financial strategy. As soon as people produced some money for a carved house, he would send a group of carvers to make a start on the work; however, the money would never be quite enough to do the whole job, so the carvers were soon shifted to a further job. Once a start on a house had been made, efforts were redoubled to get more money; such organizations as the Maori Purposes Fund Board were also asked to contribute. During these years two carving parties were almost constantly on one job or another. John (Continued on page 48)

Opening of one of the houses built by the Rotorua School of Carving, ‘Takitimu’, built as a memorial to the late Sir James Carroll and opened in 1937. A party of carvers working on the Takipu meeting house opened last year. Left to right: Derick Morris, Jim Ruru, John Taiapa, Wi Te Parihi, Charles Rutene. (Kandid Kamera Kraft, Gisborne)