Kōwhaiwhai

コファイファイ / 18th century– / Style / Ornament

Scroll patterns run along the rafters of Māori meeting houses. Built from the koru, the unfurling fern shoot, and worked in red, black and white alone, they unfold symmetry, rotation and reflection as a mathematics of curves that records genealogy and story overhead.

Kōwhaiwhai — Kōwhaiwhai pattern — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain — Kōwhaiwhai pattern — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain

Kōwhaiwhai — Ridgepole and rafters of a meeting house (Te Papa, Wellington) — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0 · © tara hunt from San Francisco, USA — Ridgepole and rafters of a meeting house (Te Papa, Wellington) — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0 · CC BY-SA 2.0 · © tara hunt from San Francisco, USA

At a glance

Visual cues

Repeating koru spirals
Red, black and white
Symmetry and reflection
Bands following the rafters

Best used for

Decorating ceilings and long beams as bands that carry a story
Designing repeated curves under strict rules of symmetry and reflection

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Dictionary entry

Type: Let koru direction mark the phrasing and keep the spiral turns even
Composition: Run the band along the rafter and mirror it about the center line
Material: Only red, black and white, with black holding the ground down
Caution: Using the patterns as decoration apart from the genealogy they record removes the sign of whose story it is and becomes appropriation.
Further study: the semantics of the koru / the space of the wharenui / attribution and cultural respect

Related entries

Tapa (Barkcloth) (タパ)Shared effects: Intimacy / Calm / Trust.Compare Kōwhaiwhai and Tapa (Barkcloth)
Azulejo (アズレージョ)Same Ornament lineage.Compare Kōwhaiwhai and Azulejo

Cite this entry

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Link: https://indexstyle.org/styles/kowhaiwhai
Markdown: [Kōwhaiwhai — IndexStyle](https://indexstyle.org/styles/kowhaiwhai)
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