Stylogenyin the style of Kōwhaiwhai & Toi Māori Design

Traditions & vernacular · 1500–present · Oceania

Kōwhaiwhai & Toi Māori Design

Also known as Kōwhaiwhai, Toi Māori, Māori rafter painting

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.

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A sample layout drawn from the style’s design choices. Its AI image is held back until someone who knows the tradition has checked it.

Use it with care

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.

01

How it works

  • Build patterns from the koru, a curling stem ending in a bulb, repeated, mirrored and interlocked.
  • Work in red ochre, black and white, balancing positive and negative shapes so the ground reads as pattern too.
  • Run designs as continuous bands along a long, narrow format, mirrored about its central axis.
  • Rely on the rhythm of curve and counter-curve rather than depicted figures.
  • Choose a named pattern for what it signifies to the iwi and the house, not for its shape alone.

Aotearoa New Zealand; kōwhaiwhai most developed on the East Coast (Tairāwhiti)

02

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition
Space & hierarchy
Typography
Colour
Form & shape
Surface & texture
Ornament
Imagery
Medium & production
Tone & intent
Avoids
Full polychrome, Gradients, Fluorescent & neon, Naturalistic depiction, Illusion of depth, Straight photography

Palette

  • #a3322a
  • #141210
  • #f2efe8
  • #c46b2b
  • #8b5a35

Typefaces

  • Whakarare

    Johnson Witehira & Kris Sowersby

  • Painted and carved lettering in 19th-century meeting houses

Known for

  • Kōwhaiwhai-painted hoe (paddles) collected on Cook's first voyage, 1769

  • Te Hau ki Tūranga meeting house

    Raharuhi Rukupō, 1842; Te Papa

  • Rongopai painted meeting house, Waituhi

    1887–88

  • Sandy Adsett

    contemporary kōwhaiwhai painting

  • Johnson Witehira

    Whakarare, a typeface designed for the Māori community

03

Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

Before it

The style it grew out of, and the styles it borrowed from.

Nothing earlier is recorded: in the atlas it is a starting point.

This styleKōwhaiwhai & Toi Māori Design1500–present · Oceania

After it

The styles that grew out of it.

No later style in the atlas grew out of it yet.

Alike in its design choices

Styles that make many of the same choices, related or not, besides those above.

04

Real works

Artefacts in museums, libraries and archives that show the style, linked at their source.

05

Sources

  1. https://teara.govt.nz/en/1966/maori-art/page-8
  2. https://tairawhitimuseum.org.nz/acquisitions/showcase-5-and-7/
  3. https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/the-first-typeface-designed-specifically-for-the-maori-community-is-changing-how-new-zealand-views-its-own-cultural-identity/
  4. Hirini Moko Mead, Te Toi Whakairo: The Art of Māori Carving (1986)

How Stylogeny researches and checks a style: where the facts come from.