Opening the wood kiln after three days of firing
Tane records the unbricking of his own wood kiln after a 72 hour firing, with the two friends who stoked it, and finds out which pots survived and which did not.
A flax weaver on the harvest and the rules
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Show notes
A flax weaver on the harvest and the rules
Tane spends a day with a master weaver near Gisborne who has worked with harakeke, New Zealand flax, for forty years. She takes him through the harvest, the protocols that govern it, and the weeks of preparation before a single strand is woven.
- Which leaves you may cut, and which you must leave for the plant
- Stripping, scraping and softening the fibre by hand
- Why the weather decides the weaving day
- A kete from harvest to finish: three weeks for a basket
- Teaching, and the students who want to skip the preparation
The weaver asked that her name not be used. Tane thanks her and her family for the day.
Transcript
Kia ora, welcome back to Kiln Opening Day. I am Tane Ropata, and this week I have left the studio and driven over to the coast near Gisborne to spend a day with a weaver who has worked with harakeke, our native flax, for forty years. She is going to take me into the flax bush and show me how to harvest it properly, because there are rules about which leaves you cut and which you leave, and those rules are older than any of us. Then we go through the stripping, the scraping and the softening, which takes weeks before you weave anything at all. A kete, a basket, takes her three weeks start to finish. I thought my pots were slow. We talk about the weather, about teaching, and about students who want to skip the hard part. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
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