Panel from a Maori house opened in 1872. It represents the ancestor for whom the
house is
named and the symbols connect the family to the ancient East Polynesian islands from which
they were forced to leave.
Native art art in its
classic forms evolved over centuries of endeavor and craft
experimentation. Some of its designs, motifs, and patterns have their roots in the
distant homelands. Over millennia. forebears had expressed religious and artistic
ideas in wood, stone, bone, ivory, and other materials found in the prevailing
environment. Tools were made of natural materials that could cut, such as stone,
bone, shell, obsidian, and shark teeth.
A characteristic of
all native art workmanship, including that of the, was the
preference for making an object from a single piece of material – such as a block of
wood – rather than joining one piece to another. However, architectural structures
and large canoes were made of parts lashed together with fibre cordage. But even
these things were composed of single, large pieces of artwork tied together. Each
part was, technically speaking, made separately as an object in and of itself. In this
sense each part of a canoe or house was an artistic object in its own right but joined
to form the large structures. Communal effort, with parts carved by different
craftsmen, was typical.
All objects were made
to serve a practical or symbolic function. They served a need
in the everyday world of work – fish hooks, adzes, digging sticks – or as religious
ritual items considered necessary to achieve some satisfactory result. Godsticks
and crop gods are examples of this latter principle, and are classed as talismans,
and their function was to keep alive the connections between the material and non-
material worlds.
Utilitarian artefacts
often had ritual versions for ceremonial use. Examples of this
were the elaborated digging sticks and fish hooks. Features added to objects of
practical use, such as small figures or heads added to weapons, seem to be related
to magic in aiding the power (mana) of the object and so improving its efficiency.
All man-made things
had a spirit life and were not regarded by the as inanimate
'dead' objects, as we now regard a bowl or spade. The importance of magic, such
as might be effected by a post or panel representing an ancestor, did not interfere
with the strength or practical utility of the carving. Ancestral figures were adapted to
posts, panels, and other things in a manner that retained artistic design, without
detracting from the primary utility of the object concerned.
Native craftwork had
a marvelous integration of function and form. Ingenuity in
adapting motifs to the objects made can be seen in almost every decorated artefact.
The rule was utility first, decoration second. When we use the word 'decoration',
however, we must always bear in mind that carved symbols usually had magical
functions. Ornateness no doubt pleased the eye of the just as it pleases us today,
yet to the makers and users, the objects and symbols were more than things of art.
