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Carved in Stone
Thirty one years ago, when Te Kaha was doing his final stint in rehab, he fell in love with pounamu and discovered his life’s work: learning about his whakapapa and telling those stories in the shapes of the stone. Te Kaha now creates taonga pounamu, including hei tiki, mere and hei matau, along with pieces that his wife Cristina, a silversmith from the Scottish Highlands, transforms into modern jewellery. They live on Tūhoe land and their business is a whānau affair with their three tamariki, who are homeschooled, all getting involved.
Thirty one years ago, when Te Kaha was doing his final stint in rehab, he fell in love with pounamu and discovered his life’s work: learning about his whakapapa and telling those stories in the shapes of the stone. Te Kaha now creates taonga pounamu, including hei tiki, mere and hei matau, along with pieces that his wife Cristina, a silversmith from the Scottish Highlands, transforms into modern jewellery. They live on Tūhoe land and their business is a whānau affair with their three tamariki, who are homeschooled, all getting involved.
Tell us about your home and whenua
Te Kaha We live in the Waiotahe Valley, between Ōpōtiki and Ōhope. When we met, we knew we wanted to have children and we wanted to raise them in the area that I am from, which is Tūhoe
— well, I whakapapa to Tūhoe, Kahungunu and Porou, but we chose Tūhoe whenua. We found this place, managed to get a mortgage, and after a couple of years we were able to get a cabin that
we helped build. We started living out here about seven years ago.
We live off-grid, with solar panels and a generator for my machinery. We have two dogs, 11 ducks, three chickens, two cows and one borrowed from the neighbour. When we first got here, there was nothing — it was forestry land, it was desolate, an area full of tree stumps. Now we have big gardens, a citrus orchard, fruit orchard, trees that
we have planted growing everywhere...
Cristina There’s 29 acres and we live right next to Waiotahe Reserve, with the Waiotahe River on
our boundary. Our studio, which we call taiwhanga pounamu, is also here, separate from our house.
It’s where we exclusively work the pounamu.
How did the two of you meet?
Cristina It must’ve been 20 years ago at a market. Te Kaha was looking for someone to do proper handmade earring hooks — I am self-taught and I was making a small range of one-off pieces.
It’s been great because we’ve always connected in that workspace realm and we can collaborate together.
I feel like I married the stone because Te Kaha dedicated his life to pounamu. One of the first things he said was that pounamu is his whānau, an ancestor. At first I thought I didn’t want to infringe on doing anything traditional like Te Kaha, because that’s not who I am. I am a tauiwi [a foreigner] and my people have always worked in silver. So it’s been nice for me to feel that I’ve found my place with the pounamu. We can celebrate it and set it in a beautiful, contemporary way.
“I’d had five months of being ... sober, and my brain had started functioning.
In other words, my ancestors, who
I carry with me all the time, were finally able to let me see real beauty. I saw
the pounamu and was instantly in love — I’ve never ever lost that connection.”
What led you to work with pounamu?
Te Kaha The way I came to pounamu was — I woke up. I was asleep for a long time. Being asleep means I was a drug addict and I was an alcoholic.
In 1991 I’d finally had enough and put myself into rehab — I did a series of them — and in September
I was at Queen Mary Hospital in Hanmer Springs. I walked into a shop opposite the hospital and
I saw the pounamu — instantly there was a connection. I said, “Hey, that’s beautiful!”
I’d had five months of being clean and sober, and my brain had started functioning. In other words, my ancestors, who I carry with me all the time, were finally able to let me see real beauty. I saw
the pounamu and was instantly in love — I’ve never ever lost that connection.
Every week I would go to that shop to spend $10 to $25 dollars buying at least a couple of blocks
of pounamu. When I finally left Queen Mary Hospital, I had all these blocks in my bag and I had
no idea what I was going to do with them, but I was going to figure something out!
I’ve always been aware of my Tūhoe whakapapa and I was visiting home more and more, doing work, helping to get headstones finished and unveilings done for whānau members who have passed on. I just always knew I was going to go home and that’s when it started. Mid 90s I moved back to Tūhoe, and I have mostly been back here ever since.
How does your whakapapa and whenua inform your work?
Te Kaha Carvers who I met in the 90s and early 2000s were missing some of the most
important aspects of pounamu carving — the whakapapa.
It’s not just about your technical skill — anyone can learn that — it is learning to articulate the connection that we have with Poutini [a guardian taniwha], with pounamu. When you begin to understand the oral histories of your people regarding pounamu, you truly enter into a world of
rich understanding and you really gain the ability to share that culture with others. So for me,
learning to carve was more about learning the oral histories regarding my ancestor Poutini, and
that’s what I’ve been learning for the last 30 years.
These histories underpin all my work. That knowledge, that mātauranga, that is the tūāpapa, foundation, of what I do — it’s not my technical skill. My skill has improved over time — I would
call myself competent. I would not call myself a tohunga [expert].
The shapes that we create are examples of the thinking processes of my ancestors and those
shapes have meanings to my people — I share those meanings with people who visit me.
Cristina That’s why markets are a good place for us. If we just wanted to put our work in galleries,
we could, but it’s the relationships. Te Kaha is a storyteller and it’s about engaging people so they have an understanding of what they are wearing. We get that face-to-face connection.
We see so many beautiful pounamu and we ask people what they mean, and most of the time they have no idea. It’s still a beautiful taonga but we’re trying to create that relationship with the wearer and pounamu so they have that relationship intact.
Te Kaha Anyone can wear pounamu. Pounamu comes from Papatūānuku, our mother — the earth. And anyone who comes from planet Earth can wear pounamu. You do not have to be Māori.
What’s the process for creating your taonga?
Cristina To begin with, we source our stone — we do go to the river but we also purchase it. You can not call it pounamu if the stone is not from Te Waipounamu — the South Island. Pounamu does not occur naturally in the North Island.
Te Kaha So many shops use the term ‘jade’ or ‘greenstone’ — because it’s not New Zealand sourced and they are not allowed to call it pounamu.
To tell if it is New Zealand pounamu, you simply ask two questions: What is the name of the person who carved the piece? What is the river the stone comes from? If a shop person can not tell you the answers, there is a very high likelihood that the stone comes from overseas.
We usually first break the pounamu down and cut it into slabs so we can design what we’re going to make. We cut the shapes out with a saw, we grind them, polish them and do the weaving of the cord.
Cristina All of us, including the children, help with the plaiting, the binding of the stone. It’s very much a family run business — everyone is involved. We have three tamariki, Te Kaha (18), who is in training to work with the pounamu, as well as a 16-year-old daughter and a 10-year-old son.
Our workshop is like a tapu space because we don’t eat or drink there; there are cultural protocols
we follow in that space that are different from our home. All our kids have grown up knowing that.
Te Kaha A lot of people ask me if I bless my work. See, I don’t know what that word ‘blessed’ means. And every time I am asked that question, I ask the person what that word means to them and they stumble — they know the word but don’t really know what it means.
You see, there is no translation of that word in Māori. None that I can work out. There is whakawātea, which is to clear something, and there is whakamana, which is to add energy to something. I say
to people, I don’t bless my work but I ‘clear’ it.
When I spend hours or days putting a lot of energy into creating a shape, I then take the energy invested in the stone and clear it. I leave the mana of the stone, then I let the pounamu make
a relationship with the next person who will carry it. I clear ‘me’ from it. And that, to me, is what
a whakawātea is.
When I make a piece for my whānau, I leave me in the stone, but when I am making pieces to sell,
for strangers, they don’t want me.
What happens at your wānanga?
Te Kaha Our wānanga [workshops] are where people come and awaken the pounamu.
I will shape and drill the pounamu, but they polish it. They do four wet polishes and five dry polishes and we do the whiri, the plaiting. People finish the wānanga wearing their pounamu.
During the five to six hours it takes them to polish up the stone, I share information. I start right from the beginning, from Hawaiki, where Poutini was born, and share the meanings of the different shapes and varieties of stone. Often one of our koroua will come with us and he will also share information.
We will travel anywhere in the North Island to do these, and I often do these workshops overseas too.
Tell us more about the mauri (life force) of pounamu
Te Kaha Pounamu is not an inanimate object — it is not a dead rock, it is a living stone, it has a
mauri, it has energy. Every winter we have special pounamu that we put on our fireplace to heat
up. We wrap them in old towels and put them in bed with our children and ourselves — they are
the most amazing foot warmers. They also radiate healing energy into us every night during winter.
One of the men who shared a lot of information with me about pounamu was Hohepa Delamere
or ‘Papa Joe’, from Whānau a Apanui — he is amazing. He taught me a lot about the healing and protective properties of pounamu.
Cristina I am always amazed by its healing and protective properties. That’s one of the beautiful things about doing the market — if you don’t have people in your whānau that work pounamu, how do you get access to the stone? That’s why at our market stall, we often have mauri stones — they
are not for sale and are usually polished on one side, natural on the other. It’s so lovely when people come along, not wanting to buy anything, and they can hold the stone and get a bit of energy.
It makes their day.
Yes, we run as a business, but it’s way more than that.
