Necklace

This necklace was given to Helen Mason (née Valentine, 1915-2014) by Litia Kubukawa from Volivoli village, Sigatoka Valley, Viti Levu, Fiji, via Helen’s daughter Julia Stuart when she visited Fiji in 1999.

Mason was a potter and first editor of the New Zealand Potter, and a significant member and mentor of the craft / arts community in Aotearoa New Zealand. She was involved from the early days of the studio pottery movement in Aotearoa New Zealand. In the 1950s she attended pottery classes through a local technical school and bought a kiln from potter Elizabeth Matheson (1890-1978). From 1958 to 1967 she worked as editor of the magazine New Zealand Potter with a committee that initially included Doreen Blumhardt, Terry Barrow and Lee Thompson. ‘The magazine captured the New Zealand pottery movement in its infancy and promoted information sharing and a sense of community amongst potters’ (Olsen, 2014). She was made a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2005.

In 1965, Mason visited the village of Yavulo near Sigatoka in Fiji as a member of a museum party observing local women making cooking pots by traditional methods (beating slabs of clay using a wooden paddle and stone anvil). Fiji has a deep and unbroken history of indigenous pottery known as Lapita pottery.

Mason returned to Fiji in 1966 and spent several weeks working with Fijian potters and studying their techniques. She was looked after by Litia Kubukawa from Volivoli village who took Mason to the nearby potters’ village of Nasama where she worked closely with potter Amalini Vola Vola. She recorded the details of collecting and processing clay, and the method of making vessels with the ‘paddle and anvil’ technique. She brought this information back to New Zealand where potters tried the methods themselves and learned about other ways of working and the context of clay work in the Pacific region. Her experiences stimulated members of the New Zealand Society of Potters to visit Fiji in 1968, including Peter Stichbury and Doreen Blumhardt.

Mason's daughter Julia Stuart visited Volivoli village in 1999 and met with Litia Kubukawa who had worked with her mother during her 1966 visit. Litia asked Julia to deliver the handmade pottery bead necklace to Helen. Julia recalls: ‘It was a formative time for my mother, and she always remembered it ... With the help of an enthusiastic local I found Litia who was very friendly, invited me into her home, and took down the necklace from where it was displayed on the wall, saying "give her this". Which I did' (pers. comm., 19 Feb 2024).

Thus, the necklace brings together crafting communities in Fiji and Aotearoa and materialises a special relationship between two people over a period of three decades.

Te Papa Decorative Arts Curator Justine Olsen noted that ‘Helen Mason’s big heart, generosity and determination to make a difference can be summed up in her comment in 1968, ‘it is important for a potter to be in a community and to try and supply what the community needs’’ (Olsen 2014).