Rationale

In so many respects, the received idea that there is no such thing as design history in New Zealand is quite correct. The subject isn’t taught as a specialised subject in any of the country’s schools, universities and polytechnics and it barely achieves recognition in any of its museums and galleries. Where it is touched upon it’s treated as a minor irrelevance, something of no importance, a physical manifestation of more weighty matters and disciplines. Material culture in New Zealand is often perceived as a matter of connoisseurship at best, a bit of a hobby; philately for materialists, if you will.

‘Māori Art’ plate. Possibly designed about 1906 by John Shorter after a Kōwhaiwhai pattern from the wharenui named Tamatekapua (constructed in 1878) of the Ngāti Whakaue subtribes Ngāti Tae-o-Tū and Ngāti Tūnohopū, of the Te Arawa descent, at the Te Papaiouru Marae near Ōhinemutu reproduced in Augustus Hamilton’s text Māori Art (1897). Enamel painted transfer print and gilt on porcelain produced by Doulton & Co, Stoke-on-Trent, England, about 1930

In part, this status reflects a national aversion to history itself. It’s something that tends to be viewed as an untoward raking over of things that are best forgotten. Unwanted scrutiny, it's believed by many, can often reveal the shoddy compromises, the messy betrayals and the outright deceptions of the country’s colonial past and present.

The same condition applies in respect of New Zealand’s material cultural history, whatever field we look at: architecture – constructed on the demolitions of the old; design – largely the result of the mediation of external commercial cartels; and heritage – periodically swept away in a purge of the outmoded and usually destroyed when ‘restored’. All pretty marginal stuff, but, like all history, packed with information that potentially enables us to find a sort of truth amidst a welter of denial

This occasional blog is intended as a sort of antidote, an hubristic response, to the symptoms of this superficial diagnosis, enabling the frustrated blogger the indulgence of being able to observe and comment on something that has no significant national cultural profile. It’s not intended as definitive; it’s not a ‘published’ document; and it’s definitely not peer reviewed. Work in progress, you might say. We’ll see.