Kowhaiwhai pattern

Friday, August 29th, 2008 | General | 1 Comment

A client has asked me to design a Kowhaiwhai pattern based on their logo. I admit I had to look up exactly what a kowhaiwhai pattern was and found a useful but ugly page that got me sussed. Also found an interesting essay snippet (below) about the development of kowhaiwhai patterns. Check it out

New Zealand has a long history of Eurocentric appropriation and assimilation that has led koru and kowhaiwhai to become signifiers both of New Zealand Art and more widely New Zealand. It began with Sydney Parkinson’s drawings of kowhaiwhai painted paddles produced during Captain Cook’s 1769 voyage and continued to the present day with an excess of koru motifs advertising logos. Since the politically engaged 1980’s this appropriation of motifs by Pakeha artists have spurned great debate in New Zealand. Pakeha artists have been seen by many to have created works using koru and kowhaiwhai problematically placing the motifs in a distorted context.

Here’s where I got to:

My first kowhaiwhai pattern

Tags: Design, kowhaiwhai, maori, pattern