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Tukutuku
Tukutuku panelling is a distinctive art form of the Māori people of New Zealand, a traditional latticework used to decorate meeting houses (wharenui). Other names are tuitui and arapaki. Tukutuku flank the posts around the edge of the wharenui, the posts are usually carved and represent ancestors. The patterns of tukutuku have symbolic meanings. Tukutuku are made with various materials. One description is vertical rods of toetoe stalks, with wooden slats across. These slats are held in place with knotting or weaving that forms a decorative pattern. The materials for this weaving are narrow strips of kiekie or harakake, some died black and the coastal plant pingao as yellow colour. The traditional skills of tukutuku are held mostly within the Māori women weaving community alongside other Māori traditional weaving techniques as the skills of whakaīro (carving) are mostly held within the Māori men carving community. Tukutuku for a wharenui are designed alongside the toh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phormium Tenax
''Phormium tenax'' (called flax in New Zealand English; in Māori; New Zealand flax outside New Zealand; and New Zealand hemp in historical nautical contexts) is an evergreen perennial plant native to New Zealand and Norfolk Island that is an important fibre plant and a popular ornamental plant.Roger Holmes and Lance Walheim. 2005. ''California Home Landscaping'', Creative Homeowner Press The plant grows as a clump of long, straplike leaves, up to two metres long, from which arises a much taller flowering shoot, with dramatic yellow or red flowers. The fibre has been widely used since the arrival of Māori to New Zealand, originally in Māori traditional textiles and also in rope and sail making after the arrival of Europeans until at least WWII. It is an invasive species in some of the Pacific Islands and in Australia. The blades of the plant contain cucurbitacins, which are poisonous to some animals, and some of them are among the bitterest tastes to humans. Etymology The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Austroderia
''Austroderia'' is a genus of five species of tall grasses native to New Zealand, commonly known as toetoe.Toetoe hosted on the NZ Landcare research Maanaki Whenua website. Page accessed 20 November 2010. The species are ''A. toetoe'', ''A. fulvida'', ''A. splendens'', ''A. richardii'' and ''A. turbaria''. They were recently reclassified in 2011 from the genus '''', although their distinctiveness had been recognized as early as 1853. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ficinia Spiralis
''Ficinia spiralis'' (pīngao, pīkao, or golden sand sedge) is a coastal sedge endemic to New Zealand (including the Chatham Islands). Originally widespread, it has suffered severely from competition with introduced marram grass and animal grazing and now has only a patchy distribution. Description Pīngao is a stout, grass-like plant, 30–90 cm tall, from the sedge family, found on active sand dunes. It is found only in New Zealand and is easily distinguished from other dune species such as spinifex or marram grass. Seen from a distance, pīngao patches have a distinctive orange hue. Most plants produce long, prostrate, tough rope-like stolons that creep along the sand surface until buried by shifting sand, leaving just the upper portion of leaves exposed. Some southern South Island populations produce dense tussock-like plants without extensive stolons. Numerous tough, roughly textured leaves are borne in dense tufts on well-spaced, short, upright stems (tillers), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Māori Traditional Textiles
Māori traditional textiles are the indigenous textiles of the Māori people of New Zealand. The organisation Te Roopu Raranga Whatu o Aotearoa, the national Māori weavers' collective, aims to preserve and foster the skills of making and using these materials. Textiles made from locally sourced materials were developed by Māori in New Zealand after migration from Polynesia as the plants used in the Pacific islands did not grow well in the New Zealand climate. In traditional Māori weaving of garments the main fibre is called muka and is made from harakeke. The Māori language terms for different types of weaving are commonly named as raranga, whatu and whiri. Raranga is a plaiting technique used for making baskets and mats; whatu is a pre-European finger weft twining weaving method used to make cloaks; and whiri is braiding to make cord. Most people weaving traditional Māori textiles were and are women. Traditionally, to become expert a young woman was initiated into Te Whare ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Māori People
The Māori (, ) are the indigenous Polynesian people of mainland New Zealand (). Māori originated with settlers from East Polynesia, who arrived in New Zealand in several waves of canoe voyages between roughly 1320 and 1350. Over several centuries in isolation, these settlers developed their own distinctive culture, whose language, mythology, crafts, and performing arts evolved independently from those of other eastern Polynesian cultures. Some early Māori moved to the Chatham Islands, where their descendants became New Zealand's other indigenous Polynesian ethnic group, the Moriori. Initial contact between Māori and Europeans, starting in the 18th century, ranged from beneficial trade to lethal violence; Māori actively adopted many technologies from the newcomers. With the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, the two cultures coexisted for a generation. Rising tensions over disputed land sales led to conflict in the 1860s, and massive land confiscations, to which ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island country by area, covering . New Zealand is about east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and south of the islands of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga. The country's varied topography and sharp mountain peaks, including the Southern Alps, owe much to tectonic uplift and volcanic eruptions. New Zealand's capital city is Wellington, and its most populous city is Auckland. The islands of New Zealand were the last large habitable land to be settled by humans. Between about 1280 and 1350, Polynesians began to settle in the islands and then developed a distinctive Māori culture. In 1642, the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman became the first European to sight and record New Zealand. In 1840, representatives of the United Kingdom and Māori chiefs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wharenui
A wharenui (; literally "large house") is a communal house of the Māori people of New Zealand, generally situated as the focal point of a ''marae''. Wharenui are usually called meeting houses in New Zealand English, or simply called ''whare'' (a more generic term simply referring to a house or building). Also called a ''whare rūnanga'' ("meeting house") or ''whare whakairo'' (literally "carved house"), the present style of wharenui originated in the early to middle nineteenth century. The houses are often carved inside and out with stylized images of the iwi's (or tribe's) ancestors, with the style used for the carvings varying from tribe to tribe. Modern meeting houses are built to regular building standards. Photographs of recent ancestors may be used as well as carvings. The houses always have names, sometimes the name of a famous ancestor or sometimes a figure from Māori mythology. Some meeting houses are built at places that are not the location of a tribe, but where many ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Auckland War Memorial Museum
The Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira (or simply the Auckland Museum) is one of New Zealand's most important museums and war memorials. Its collections concentrate on New Zealand history (and especially the history of the Auckland Region), natural history, and military history. The present museum building was constructed in the 1920s in the neo-classicist style, and sits on a grassed plinth (the remains of a dormant volcano) in the Auckland Domain, a large public park close to the Auckland CBD. Auckland Museum's collections and exhibits began in 1852. In 1867 Aucklanders formed a learned society – the Auckland Philosophical Society, later the Auckland Institute. Within a few years the society merged with the museum and '' Auckland Institute and Museum'' was the organisation's name until 1996. Auckland War Memorial Museum was the name of the new building opened in 1929, but since 1996 was more commonly used for the institution as well. From 1991 to 2003 the muse ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kiekie (plant)
Kiekie (''Freycinetia banksii'') is a densely branched, brittle, woody climber native to New Zealand. It is a member of the screwpalm family Pandanaceae. Kiekie has numerous cane-like stems up to 40 mm in diameter, which freely produce aerial roots. It climbs tree trunks, or forms dense tangles on the forest floor. Its stems and leaves are a dominant feature in many areas of New Zealand forest, the stems eventually reaching up to 30 m long. The leaves are long and slender, 60–90 cm long and 2-2.5 cm broad. Distribution Kiekie is found in forests throughout the North Island. In the South Island, kiekie is more common in higher rainfall areas, reaching its southern limit near the Clarence river in the east and in Fiordland in the west. Classification In 1973, B.C. Stone argued that ''F. banksii'' should be regarded as a subspecies of ''F. baueriana'' of Norfolk Island (Stone 1973). Subsequent to this, de Lange et al. (2005:591-592), countered Stone's argument ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Whakairo
Toi whakairo (art carving) or just whakairo (carving) is a Māori traditional art of carving in wood, stone or bone. History Timber was formed into houses, fencepoles, pouwhenua, containers, taiaha, tool handles and waka (boats). Carving tools were made from stone, preferably the very hard pounamu (greenstone). Bone was used for fish hooks and needles amongst other things. Designs on carvings depict tribal ancestors, and are often important for establishing iwi and hapu identity. After European contact, many traditionally carved items were no longer widely produced in favour of using Western counterparts, such as waka huia treasure containers being replaced with lockable seaman's chests by the 1840s. Traditionally, many expert carvers focused on creating elaborate waka taua (war canoes), however this declined during the 1860s when waka taua were superseded by whaleboats or small European style sailing ships. During the decline, carvers focused instead on carved marae, obj ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tohunga
In the culture of the Māori of New Zealand, a tohunga (tōhuka in Southern Māori dialect) is an expert practitioner of any skill or art, either religious or otherwise. Tohunga include expert priests, healers, navigators, carvers, builders, teachers and advisors. "A tohunga may have also been the head of a whanau but quite often was also a rangatira and an ariki".Mead, S. M. (1997). ''Landmarks, bridges and visions: Essays''. Wellington, New Zealand: Victoria University Press. (p. 197). The equivalent and cognate in Hawaiian culture is ''kahuna'', tahu'a in Tahitian. Callings and practices There are many classes of tohunga (Best 1924:166) including: *Tohunga ahurewa: highest class of priest *Tohunga matakite: foretellers of the future * Tohunga whakairo: expert carvers *Tohunga raranga: expert weavers *Tohunga tātai arorangi: experts at reading the stars *Tohunga kōkōrangi: expert in the study of celestial bodies (astronomer) *Tohunga tārai waka: expert canoe builders *Tohu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Koru
The ''koru'' () is a spiral shape based on the appearance of a new unfurling silver fern frond. It is an integral symbol in Māori art, carving and tattooing, where it symbolises new life, growth, strength and peace. Its shape "conveys the idea of perpetual movement," while the inner coil "suggests returning to the point of origin". Use in design The ''koru'' is the integral motif of the symbolic and seemingly abstract ''kowhaiwhai'' designs traditionally used to decorate ''wharenui'' (meeting houses). There are numerous semi-formal designs, representing different features of the natural world. The logo of Air New Zealand, the national carrier, incorporates a ''koru'' design—based on the Ngaru (Ngāti Kahungunu) kowhaiwhai pattern—as a symbol of New Zealand ''flora''. The logo was introduced in 1973 to coincide with the arrival of the airline's first McDonnell Douglas DC-10 wide-body jet. In 1983, Friedensreich Hundertwasser based his proposed design for a secondary New ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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