John Taiapa and Carving Today — continued from page 31

Te Ao Hou, September 1959, Page 48

John Taiapa and Carving Today — continued from page 31 and his party of six carvers would be sent, say to Mangahanea Dining Hall, while Pine with another similar party was at the Rotorua school, busy on the carvings for the Wairoa hall. Pine was then shifted to Putiki, and John to Wairoa. And so the two groups travelled around from one place to another, staying on tribal maraes, fed by the local people, sleeping in meeting houses. Wives and children accompanied the carvers who constituted a sizeable busload when they moved from one marae to another. At no place was there any privacy or any respite from the traditional Maori way of living. John built a very comfortable home for himself in Rotorua but he was rarely there; most of the time he, his wife and his children were on the road—‘a travelling circus’, as John now calls it. In this way the family were brought up, although some years ago the ‘circus’ atmosphere stopped when John refused to accept the marae type of accommodation any longer and insisted on staying in hotels or guest houses. But this was as late as the fifties. In the thirties, the carvers' rate of pay was adapted to the times. Qualified men got two shillings an hour, Pine Taiapa only was paid 2s. 6d. Students got 25s. to 35s. per week. It was only later that the contract system was introduced whereby a carver puts his price on the whole of a job—something like £4,500 for the woodcarving on an average fully decorated meeting house. Today, some arrangements are on an hourly basis, others on contract. John Taiapa prefers contracts; he still has a scale of charges worked out by Sir Apirana Ngata shortly before his death and clings to this price list when asked for quotations.