Folk Art Figure, d. 1920s–30s
Maori folk artist, North Island, New Zealand
Carved and fashioned wood
13” h x 4½ w (33.02 x 11.43 cm)
Price: $550
Purchased in 1992 from a Maori family we met in Whangarei, northern North Island, New Zealand. An older man said that his father carved it in the 1920s–30s.
The Maori folk art tradition, which traces its origins to the 1880s and “first appeared in meeting houses throughout the eastern tribal areas of the North Island,” is an art form with “obvious sources in both European and Classic Maori art traditions. It is a clearly identifiable and vital communicative art, complex in its iconography and significance to its creators. It is not simply a transitional art of a particular period, or naive copy of European art. Rather, it is an art of continuity and growth, with many of its more creative artists having arrived at extraordinary power and originality” (Taylor 1988: ix). For somewhat similar examples, vide Taylor (1988: 69).
