Te Toki: art of the adze

Tu Tangata, Issue 26, 1 October 1985, Page 39

Te Toki: art of the adze

By Alan Taylor

Classic Maori culture was outstanding in its range of creative achievement. It was a culture that produced highly imaginative art works in wood, bone and stone that included elaborately carved ancestral figures; finely decorated weapons; and remarkable ritual and ceremonial adzes or toki.

Dating to about a thousand years ago, the first Maori adzes were eastern Polynesian in origin, and served a number of purposes. Some were used in tree felling and canoe building, while others were designed for ceremonial use and ritual burial. Well made from different types of argillite and basalt, the adzes were quadrangular or triangular in form; the technique of manufacture consisting of flaking, hammerdressing and grinding. On completion, toki were hafted with a curved wooden handle, with the adze blade secured by decorative cord binding.

Recovered from early Archaic settlements and internments, ceremonial adzes are outstanding in craftsmanship. Abstract in form, many are unqestionably works of art equal in aesthetic achievment to later classic wood carving created for meeting houses. Highly tapu, ceremonial adzes were of deep religious significance; their possessors being priestly experts or tohunga who normally made them and endowed them with the spiritual power of their own mana.

Unique in rarity and decoration, the spiral adzes of Hawkes Bay date to between 1500 and 1800 AD. Classified as Type I by archaeologists, they have straight cutting edges and are of finegrained basalt. Made by Ngati Kahungungu tohunga, they are unknown elsewhere in New Zealand or in Polynesia, and have a remarkable lightreflecting surface that is extraordinary. With their spiralled ‘motif, the adzes are all without evidence of use; are in fact invariably perfectly preserved unlike most adzes. Why, is a mystery. They have been well documented, but not culturally or historically researched by ethnologists. However. there is surety in their outstanding artistic achievement.

Significantly, the touring American Te Maori exhibition included among the great treasures of Classic Maori taonga several adzes; among them a spiralled adze along with greenstone (pounamu) toki. Thus elevating adzes (for the first

time) to the status of public works of art an acknowledgement that has been slow in realisation in museums. But not, of course, among Maori their creators over a thousand years!

Closely identified with ritual and ceremonial, greenstone adzes varied greatly in size and craftsmanship. Hafted in elaborately carved handles decorated with either dog hair or parrot feathers, greenstone toki often had knotched edges that identified them as genealogical sources of reference. Passed down through the generations, many toki pounamu were highly tapu on account of extraordinary mana as a consequence of ownership by priests and chiefs. Some were credited with supernatural powers and were appealed to by tohunga maire before battle. When hafted the adzes were toki-pou-tangata and, as such, were symbols of chiefly power.

The techniques of adze making were common knowledge but not the more esoteric ritual connected with ceremonial adzes used in, for example, the first felling strokes cut into a tree set apart for construction of a war canoe. Created by tohunga of genius, these adzes were traded among tribes and were sacred taonga connected with important tribal occassions such as chiefly marriages and births.

Formed from the finest available greenstone and argillite of the South Island ceremonial adzes were first roughly shaped by skilfull flaking, then hammer dressed before being ground (under flowing water) on hoanga of varying grain; meticulous, patient work that took weeks before completion of the adze. Often given a name, toki possessed the mana of its maker; between adze and creator there was an intimate, spiritual bond. It was invested with something of the personality of its maker, his mana.

The mythology of the adze maker revolved round gods who personified his working materials: greenstone and abrasives that took the form of both male and female deities or atua perpetually in conflict with each other. Under instruction of experts in adze manufacture, apprentices were taught the lore of their craft, additional to its techniques and identification of the complex geology of its materials. All adze and stone working experts possessed high social status, and were well rewarded for commissioned work, which included production of weapons

such as basalt patu onewa and highly prized patu pounamu or greenstone club.

The aesthetic appreciation of pure form is clearly reflected in the precision of many early and Classic Maori adzes where precision in shape was not quite as important as simple function. The purity of form added nothing to performance of purpose, as many crudely made adzes demonstrate. That Classic Maori appreciated the abstract in art is obvious in the precise form and finish in many toki. However, only recently has the observation been made: which is extraordinary given clear existence of the adzes a thousand year inheritance, and a creative inspiration for Maori artists of our own time.

The earliest Maori adzes were the most varied in form, and were more regionally identifiable. During the Classic period however, a simple, highly polished and symmetrical adze termed 2B by archaeologists replaced most Archaic-type adzes on a level of standardisation remarkable for a neolithic society. Used in most phases of woodworking and timber preparation (from felling to baulk and plank reduction), 2B adzes were used in preparing ground for cultivation as hoes and in paa trenching and excavation of house and kumara pits. Widely varying in size, some of the adzes were beautifully shaped, and were outstanding abstract, portable art works created by master stone workers. Represented in basalt, serpentine and pounamu 2B adzes were the last adze-type created by the Maori before widespread 19th Century introduction of European iron tools. And with the introduction, an ancient art was lost but not its achievement.

Classic Maori wood carving was highly stylised and elaborate in detail compared with the formalistic abstraction of the 2B adze and its Archaic precursors. As a singularly identifiable expression of the Maori art tradition. Classic carving continues into the present almost unmodified or more to the point, with little creative development. With inevitable consequences: much of contemporary Maori carving is uninspired, even lifeless.... Which perhaps suggests that a different traditional source of creative inspiration must be found that can be applied to, for example, meeting house decoration. As an answer to the problem, possibly the abstract tradition of adze making should be closely considered. It has much to commend it. Instead of intricately surface decorated figurative wall panels or poupou, why not abstract wall panels of calculated symmetry, of imaginative form that conform to traditional creative insight and reflect the Space Age? It would be an extraordinary, creative achievement in a developing Maori art tradition.