
David Eggleton
Kura Koiwi: Bone Treasures, by Brian Flintoff (Craig Potton, Nelson, 2011), 160 pp., $39.95. The Passing World: The Passage of Life: John Hovell and the Art of Kōwhaiwhai, by Damian Skinner (Rim Books/Huia Publishers, 2010), 136 pp., $49.99.
The cover of Kura Koiwi depicts the taongā kōrero (personal pendant) carved for the kaumātua Sir Tipene O’Regan out of a big whale tooth, using a design based on the traditional symbol of Murihiku — the southernmost part of the South island — which is a whale’s tail. The bottom half of the carving incorporates the head of the whale, an acknowledged tribal guardian or taniwha.
This talisman dangled from the kaumātua’s neck when he was fronting the 1980s TV series The Natural World of the Maori, and Sir Tipene O’Regan continues to wear it on ceremonial occasions. In Māoridom such kaitiaki (or talismans) worn as pendants, brooches, or perhaps just kept in a special place, serve to represent personal, family or tribal stories, symbolically offering connections to mythologies of the spirit world. They serve as tokens of identity, reciprocity, communality. But as Brian Flintoff points out in Kura Koiwi: ‘a bone carving is simply a decoration unless details of its constituent parts are explained to reveal the story it represents.’
Brian Flintoff is a self-taught Pākehā master bone carver who grew up in Southland and now lives in the Nelson region. Kura Koiwi brings together examples of his bone carvings as a follow-up to Taongā Pūoro: Singing Treasures (2003), which contained examples of traditional Māori musical instruments carved by Flintoff and played by musicians Hirini Melbourne and Richard Nunns on their classic recording Te Ku Te Whe, which came out on Rattle Records in 1994. With its whirrings, clicks, and solitary mournful flutes, this CD evoked elemental sounds of Aotearoa that derive not only from birdsong, but also from notes sounded by humpback whales, the fluttering of moths, clicking noises of insects and the rustlings of the wind.