Whakairo Carving

Whakairo covers carving in wood, bone and pounamu, and its fullest expression is a wharenui, the meeting house that stands at the centre of a marae. A wharenui is built as an ancestor: the ridgepole is the spine, the rafters are ribs, the carved poupou along the walls are named forebears, and the whole thing encloses you rather than displaying itself. Totara is the traditional timber, worked with stone adzes before metal arrived. In Rotorua the arts and crafts institute at Te Puia has trained carvers since the 1960s, and its students work in view of visitors. On the West Coast, Hokitika is the centre for pounamu, the South Island greenstone.

What to look for

• A carved wharenui - the poupou, ridgepole and threshold of a meeting house, entered with permission.
• The Rotorua carving school - students working totara with chisels in an open workshop.
• Pounamu on the West Coast - greenstone cut and polished in Hokitika workshops.
• Museum collections - older carving, including pieces made before metal tools reached the country.

When to go

Year-round. Carving schools and workshops keep weekday hours and are quiet on Sundays, so a midweek visit sees more actual work in progress. Marae visits happen by arrangement or as part of an organised experience rather than on a whim. Summer brings festivals where carvers demonstrate outdoors, though the workshops themselves are the better place to watch.

Practical notes

Most greenstone in souvenir shops is imported jade or resin, and the labelling is often vague; genuine local pounamu costs a lot and is usually sold with information about where it came from. Photography inside a wharenui is often restricted, so ask first. Carving demonstrations run to set hours, and arriving outside them means looking at finished work in a shop.

Nearby

Rotorua's geothermal valley sits beside the carving school; Hokitika is the West Coast base for greenstone.