IS THERE A FUTURE FOR MAORI CARVING?

Te Ao Hou, September 1959, Page 51

IS THERE A FUTURE FOR MAORI CARVING? To-day, the Rotorua School of Arts and Crafts is closed. Flourishing during the thirties, it was closed during the war and then reopened with John Taiapa as instructor. The last house carved at the school was Tapeka, the house recently opened at Waihi. Since then, the building has been locked. By no means all the carving work of the thirties was done at Rotorua; in fact, those who have meeting houses built like to have the carving done on their own maraes where they can watch the work in progress and this limited the usefulness of the building in Rotorua. Still, it was indispensable as a headquarters and a place for storage. How the future of carving can be safeguarded it is hard to tell. At present, there are still plenty of experts left from the days of the Rotorua school and the problem seems to be how to find useful employment for their talents. Employment on traditional carved houses is inevitably lagging but there should be plenty of other uses for Maori woodcarvers. Could they be used to decorate public buildings? Has enough been done to market superior carvings of medium size? We do not wish to encourage present tourist jobs done in a few minutes but very good and eminently saleable small work could be carved if a week or a day or even half a day could be devoted to it. This is well worth examining: with some thought and planning there might well be a good future for carving. And the experience of the last thirty years has shown that the talent will come forward as soon as the opportunities are opened. Mr Charles Tareha, son of Mr Tuiri Tareha, of Waiohiki, Napier, graduated recently from the Watchtower Bible School of Gilead, South Lansing, New York. ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ The Ahuriri tribal committee has been offered a shingle island in the Ahuriri tidal channel by the Napier City Council for the establishment of a marae and community centre. ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ Mrs R. T. Cairns, of Kaitemako Road, Welcome Bay, Tauranga, was recently presented with the Tauranga Co-operative Dairy Association cream-grading cup. The cup will be held for a year on behalf of the Matapihi run which has supplied the Tauranga factory with the most improved cream for the second year in succession. Mrs Cairns is the daughter of Mr John Ohia and the widow of Ahuwhenua trophy winner R. T. Cairns, who died suddenly last January. ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ Canon Te Hihi Kaa, of Karamu, gave a series of six lectures on ‘Maori History and Culture’ at the Hastings Public Library recently, under the auspices of the Wellington Regional Council of Adult Education. ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ The Russian Geographical Literature Publishing House has announced the publication of Te Rangihiroa's ‘Vikings of the Sunrise’ in Russian.