Classic guide to traditional Māori designs comes back into print after many years

Māori Rafter & Tāniko Designs

W.J. Phillipps

In the more than 80 years since Māori Rafter & Tāniko Designs first saw the light of day, the book’s clear text and sumptuous colour patterns have served legions of readers and craftspeople. 

 

Now Oratia Books is bringing this classic work by W.J Phillipps back into print, enabling a new generation to access a work that until now had been hard to source. 

This handy guide provides a detailed exploration of important patterns used in Māori architecture and textiles, focusing on the intricate designs of rafter carving, tāniko weaving and tukutuku panels. 

 

With an all-new layout, updated text elements including macrons, and inclusion of new colour illustrations, this edition aims help readers easily access the designs.

 

That supports the aim Phillipps outlined in his introduction, namely ‘to analyse Māori rafter patterns and discuss their component parts in such a manner that a clearer understanding and a greater appreciation of them will be the result.’

Māori Rafter & Tāniko Designs is on sale now in good bookstores nationwide.

This new book adds to Oratia's range of arts and craft books from Oratia, including Hirini Moko Mead's Te Whatu Tāniko: Tāniko Weaving Technique and Tradition and Te Toi Whakairo: The Art of Māori Carving.

The Author

William John (W.J.) Phillipps was born in Oamaru in 1893. In 1915, he joined the staff of the Dominion Museum (now Te Papa Tongarewa), Wellington, where he worked as an ethnologist, ichthyologist, ornithologist and scientific illustrator. During a career that spanned five decades, he published some 200 scientific papers and authored several books in the fields of zoology and anthropology. He passed away in 1967.

Publication Date: 10 June 2025 |  ISBN: 978-1-99-004279-9 |  RRP $39.99

Paperback, 250 x 185 mm portrait, 72 pages colour