Artwork Information

Angas's description:

"PLATE LIX.

DOMESTIC ECONOMY: WOMEN MAKING MATS, &c.

1. A sketch at Kailote, on the Waikato, showing a cooking-house, with a couple of old women performing the ceremony of ongi, or pressing noses.

2. An aged woman of Te Mutu, making a basket of the leaves of the tawara (Freycinetia Banksii).

3. A slave woman, preparing potatoes by scraping them with a mussel shell. The potato forms the principal article of food amongst the New Zealanders, and much of their time is employed in its cultivation.

4. Interior of a house at Rangiheata's pah at Porirua, with women engaged in manufacturing flax garments. The pole in the foreground, with a carved image beneath, supports the ridge-pole of the building.

5. Tangi, or crying of welcome. When friends meet, they cry together for some time: then succeeds the ongi, or pressing noses, as shown in figure 6. Both these sketches are from life, and were made near Taupiri, on the Waikato river."