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 in its classic forms evolved over centuries of endeavour 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
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
makers 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.