Project Brief: Taonga Pūoro - Pūtōrino

Time to get into the mahi.  The Covid-19 crisis is now in reprieve (hopefully for good) and we have entered into Level 1 at long last.  This means our workshop is open for us to attend weekly night classes again.  I'm so excited to get into the workshop and have the experts around me as I continue my learning journey that is Whakairo.

Knowing we are heading into the workshop, I thought I had better get my project brief sorted for our first creative work which is due in at the end of this semester.  Initially I thought I could do my tekoteko, but after some consideration I thought I had better tackle a project that will allow me to practice some whakarei (because I need all the practice I can get).  So I decided on a pūtōrino, motivated by Shar in our class.  I saw her working on hers during our last couple of class zui so I thought, "Cool, I'll do one too so I can watch and learn from her".

So this weekend has been spent on creating a project brief, designing and thinking about the whakaaro of the taonga pūoro and getting into the shaping of the piece.  I used a piece of timber my bro had left in his garage.  We think it's a piece given to him by my cousin who supplies in specialised timber in Auckland.  I'll try and find out what the wood is.

Before I started I had a bit of a tutu with my chisels just to get a feel of what it would be like to carve.  The wood is beautiful and one day so will my carving skills lol. 

I drew up the outline of my pūtōrino onto my block of wood.  I used my skill saw to take out the corners and to cut out a cross-section.  Then I just used 'Tipene' and mallet to start taking out larger chunks of wood.

I enjoyed my time getting to know my new chisel "Tipene" . I named him after the helpful guy down at downtown tools.  I had a good yak to him and he was very interested in my whakairo journey and was super encouraging, so my new chisel (which I want to make a purupuru whakangao - after seeing Kawiti's and Matua Paki's) is named after him. 

I spent most my spare time on Saturday, shaping and trying to get the symmetry right for the pūtōrino so I can use the band saw in class next week to split and start hollowing the inside.  I also just had a look at the whakarei 'whiriki' design on the piece.  I'm looking forward to working on this next week.