Ethnic crafts

[norfolkenchants]

Stumbled upon ur forum. It's not very busy is it

I was specifically interested in ethnic arts and crafts in your country, I understand that the indigenous people of New Zealand are renowned for their talents in this type of thing, especially their use of natural materials from both plants and animals.

I would be interested to know of the type of crafts that other members on this forum do also. Whether they have adopted techniques of the Maori or that of their original country of origin. Or do you do crafts etc purely for your own enjoyment.

I currently work for an ethnics arts company in the Uk, but at this stage of my enquiries I cannot divulge the name.
All I can say is that they are looking to expand their enterprise, firstly in the type of products they can provide to the open market in the UK and then to other countries, New Zealand being one of the options.

It would be interesting to get feed back about the popularity of arts & crafts, outlets providing materials, and what happens to the products once made.
How do you sell them, if at all, what kind of outlets take homemade crafts, to what standard do they have to be and what other means of selling wares are available, ie: craft markets?

I wait in anticipation for your reply.

[jack]

Gidday

In New Zealand there are many outlets for crafts. A lot of towns have craft shops that are run as co-operatives, there a regular craft markets, in some places every week. And of course there are very expensive craft shops that target the tourist industry.

The most common craft that is done by the Marori these days I would guess is carving. In both wood and bone. Some are really neat too.
There is also what the call kite (Kitty) which is the weaving of mainly flax.

And no, this site is not very busy but I am, so I will try to get back with more info soon. Let's know what else you would like to know about too.

[norfolkenchants]

Thank you for your reply. Very interesting about the outlets etc, I'm not sure whether the 'tourist' crafts are really the right area to pursue, they tend to be rather 'twee' . Ok for the humble tourist I suppose. Would be more interested in the more expensive crafts shops, although we deal in etnic crafts we want to appeal to the upper end of the market. Many of the poor souls who make these wonderful objects lead such terrible lives. They often have such large families and more often than not, many family members suffering with terminal diseases or illnesses. Our target group this year is to send aid to parts of Africa where the AIDS virus is most prevelent. We live in such troubled times and as a Christian based movement we hope to help as many of these suffering souls as possible.


Wooden carvings are generally very popular, However I'm not sure about the use of bones though. What kind would they use? Our clientele would not buy products of certain origins, such as Ivory etc.

What is flax?

Thanks again for your reply and for sparing the time to do so.

regards

FO