Book Review: 'Rauru'

Rauru, recently published by Otago University Press ($120, hbk) and edited by the eminent Cambridge anthropologist Nicholas Thomas, is both a very beautiful and interesting book, although its subject - the interpretation of history through the work of an eminent Maori carver, Tene Waitere (left) - may be thought more suited to an academic than a general readership.

I disagree, mainly because of the way the book has been contrived, with an essay contributed by Thomas, interviews with descendants by Lyonel Grant and James Schuster, and numerous historic pictures.

It is in essence a biography of one of the most famous of our carvers, who died in 1931, and it traces his work to their many resting places around the globe.

It places his activities in the context of Empire, describes his manner of carving, and throughout is lavishly illustrated by the photographer Mark Adams.

Its publishers describe the style of the book as experimental, and so it is, and a successful one in which history, sociology and biography are married to an ancient art.

- Bryan James