Stylogeny combining Kōwhaiwhai × Torres Strait Islander Linocut

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Style combination · Contrasts

Kōwhaiwhai × Torres Strait Islander Linocut

Another Oceanian pattern tradition, but kōwhaiwhai paints symmetrical koru scrolls in red, black and white along rafters, while Torres Strait linocut carves hatching around narrative figures; never treat Māori and Torres Strait design as one 'Pacific' style.

From the research on Torres Strait Islander Linocut

Mix them and make something Kōwhaiwhai Torres Strait Islander Linocut

VowKōwhaiwhai × Torres Strait1500 · 1991
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Kōwhaiwhai, their arrangement from Kōwhaiwhai, the finish from Torres Strait Islander Linocut. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Kōwhaiwhai & Toi Māori Design Torres Strait Islander Linocut

Type from Torres Strait Islander Linocut
Colour from Kōwhaiwhai
Form from Kōwhaiwhai
Composition from Kōwhaiwhai
Surface from Torres Strait Islander Linocut

02

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Torres Strait Islander Linocut

Vow

Caveat, standing in for Printmaker's pencilled margin under the image: title, often in Kala Lagaw Ya (David Bosun, Lagau mabaigau malu aidal, 2002), edition number, signature and date; on Alick Tipoti's Zugubal (2006) 'A Tipoti 06 ©' is pencilled lower left, the title 'Zugubal' lower centre and the edition 9/35 lower right

Text · Kōwhaiwhai

Toi Māori, the visual arts of the tangata whenua of Aotearoa, of which kōwhaiwhai, the painted scroll patterns of paddles and meeting-house rafters, is the most graphic strand. Patterns are built from the koru (unfurling frond) and crescent forms in red ochre (kōkōwai), black and white, balancing positive and negative shapes in long mirrored bands, alongside carving (whakairo), tukutuku lattice panels and woven tāniko.

Archivo; Kōwhaiwhai used Whakarare and Painted and carved lettering in 19th-century meeting houses

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Kōwhaiwhai, with a counter-accent from Torres Strait Islander Linocut. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Kōwhaiwhai & Toi Māori Design Torres Strait Islander Linocut

  • #f2efe8 ground · 36%
  • #141210 ink · 14%
  • #c46b2b accent · 18%
  • #a5432a accent · 14%
  • #1d4e7a accent · 10%
  • #d9d0bf accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f2efe8;
  --ink: #141210;
  --accent-1: #c46b2b;
  --accent-2: #a5432a;
  --accent-3: #1d4e7a;
  --accent-4: #d9d0bf;
  --font-display: "Caveat", cursive;
  --font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Kōwhaiwhai & Toi Māori Design: Toi Māori is taonga: kōwhaiwhai patterns can belong to particular iwi and houses and carry whakapapa, and tā moko is personal and especially restricted. Work with Māori designers and iwi under tikanga, credit them, and do not graft koru onto letters or products as generic 'tribal' decoration.

Torres Strait Islander Linocut: These prints are the work of named Torres Strait Islander artists, most of them living and in copyright, and their stories, totems, constellations and minaral patterns belong to particular families, clans and islands of Zenadth Kes; Mariw Minaral, the title of Alick Tipoti's 2020–2023 exhibition, means spiritual patterns, and the hidden images within his patterns are secrets that protect sacred cultural information. Torres Strait Islanders are a distinct people from Aboriginal Australians: even the V&A files Nona's print under 'Australian Aboriginal' style, so do not label the work Aboriginal, 'tribal' or generically Pacific, or blend it with dot painting or other Oceanian traditions. Commission or license work from Islander artists and their art centres, such as Moa Arts (Ngalmun Lagau Minaral) on Mua, and follow Creative Australia's Protocols for using First Nations Cultural and Intellectual Property in the Arts. Borrow only the general method of a densely carved black relief, never a particular print, an artist's figures, a legend or a constellation story; never invent Zenadth Kes legends, masks, headdresses or minaral as decoration, never add an artist's signature, and never present a generated image as a Torres Strait Islander print.

04

The two styles

1500–present · Oceania Kōwhaiwhai & Toi Māori Design Toi Māori, the visual arts of the tangata whenua of Aotearoa, of which kōwhaiwhai, the painted scroll patterns of paddles and meeting-house rafters, is the most graphic strand. Patterns are built from the koru (unfurling frond) and crescent forms in red ochre (kōkōwai), black and white, balancing positive and negative shapes in long mirrored bands, alongside carving (whakairo), tukutuku lattice panels and woven tāniko. A black-and-cream woodcut-style poster reads “SALT PATHS” above four people paddling a long decorated canoe. Patterned waves surround seabirds, stars, a sun-like disk, a sea turtle, fish, a ray, and shells. 1991–present · Oceania Torres Strait Islander Linocut Relief prints by Torres Strait Islander artists of Zenadth Kes, which grew from an Indigenous visual art course at Cairns College of TAFE by 1991 and the Mualgau Minaral collective on Mua (Moa) Island. Dennis Nona, Billy Missi, Alick Tipoti, Brian Robinson and others carry island carving into lino: ancestral heroes, canoes, sharks, dugong and stars interlock across a surface packed with minaral, fine incised hatching and zigzags, cut as a black key block, often with added colour, some prints over two metres long, and Robinson also sets superheroes and pop-culture icons among the minaral.

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More combinations

With Kōwhaiwhai

With Torres Strait Islander Linocut

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