MAORI ART FOR HOME DECORATION

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 59, 1 June 1927, Page 12

MAORI ART FOR HOME DECORATION

“AN ABSURD IDEA” To the Editor, “The Home Beautiful.” Sir, — It was with considerable amusement that I noticed the suggestion in last week’s “Home Beautiful” that there should be a “judicious absorbing of Maori art in our schemes of homebuilding and decoration.” Surely this page is encroaching on the territory of the cartoonist; you are running it in conjunction with “A Jest Or T • j” are you not? Do you seriously put forward the idea that we should desert the forms of architecture which have been our birthright for centuries and adopt an alleged “art,” always classified by authority as barbaric? I am not 'saying that the forms of culture of the race are not worth studying from an ethnological point of view but it is laughably absurd to think that we couid ever forget our civilisation enough to stick up hideous monsters, the bad dreams of a race’s infancy, in our drawing-rooms or even at our gateposts. Let Greece and Rome be our models. We certainly have reverted to the barbaric in the painting of our faces and in the disgusting trend of dancing, but let us not go berserk entirely. HOME-BEAUTIFIER. Our correspondent has evidently glanced at the head lines and failed to read the special article on the subject. It might be as well to explain to him that it was not proposed to install totem poles in the bedroom.— Editor.