item details
Overview
Mount Taranaki, on the west coast of New Zealand's North Island looms in the background of this scene carved in tōtara wood. A mirror-glass river runs through the centre of the work, and a waka (canoe) and Maori meeting house stand in the foreground. The New Zealand scene was carved about 1905 by William Gee, a Chinese man living in Wellington, New Zealand.
Gee's work
Gee was well known in Wellington, and admired for his carving in a time when Chinese immigrants were not popular in New Zealand. Listing his occupation as 'carver and gilder', he created highly detailed New Zealand town and forest scenes. He also produced larger, commissioned work, such as church fittings, in wood and stone.
Gee's smaller pictorial work would have been a remarkable cross-cultural example of Chinese woodcarving coupled with New Zealand motifs. However, most of it has not survived. This work, Te Papa's only example of Gee's talent, is simple and was produced late in his life.
William Gee
William Ah Gee (1844 -1914?) was one of Wellington's earliest Chinese settlers. He was born in China's Canton Province, arriving in Wellington in 1868, aged twenty-four. Prior to moving to Aotearoa New Zealand, Gee had worked in Melbourne, Australia for an award-winning Chinese business, Kem Wah, which specialised in ornamental wood carving. In 1871 he married Jane Melbourne, and by the late 1870s he was living in Blenheim, at the top of New Zealand's South Island.
One of William’s sons, Billy Gee, would go on to become a cabinet maker. Billy was often credited by the renowned Chinese New Zealand artist, Guy Ngan, as an important teacher and mentor.
This extract originally appeared in Between Dreams (Te Papa Press, 2026) on page 30.
This extract was authored by Grace Gassin.
This charming tōtara carving of a snow-dusted Taranaki Maunga, however, may offer one such rare glimpse.
It was created by one of Wellington’s earliest Chinese settlers, William Ah Gee (1844–1912), who was originally from China’s Guangdong province. William arrived in Wellington, via Australia, in 1868. At just twenty-four years old, he already enjoyed a reputation as a fine carver, as he and his fellow wood carvers at the Kem Wah workshop in Melbourne had won a medal for their work at the 1866 Intercolonial Exhibition of Australasia.1 The achievement proved to be a helpful tool for self-promotion as William worked to establish himself in his new home, and it wasn’t long before the Christchurch Star reported that he ‘rejoices in the euphonious appellation of Kem Wah Ah Gee’.2 By the late 1870s, William was living in Blenheim with his wife, Jane. There, his talents and business savvy were rewarded with local commissions for fine church and household furniture, fire surrounds, gravestones, picture frames and low relief scenes.3William evidently enjoyed using his skills to depict local towns, cities and forests, publicly exhibiting several of them in Wellington in 1881.4 This rustic scene, which was carved by William some decades later, suggests that he continued to create these works even towards the end of his life. The scene features not only Taranaki’s famous maunga, but also a whare and river in the foreground. The whare is delicately inlaid with pāua, while the river’s translucence is enhanced with glass.
1 Official Record, Containing Introduction, Catalogues, Reports and Awards of the Jurors, and Essays and Statistics on the Social and Economic Resources of the Australasian Colonies: Intercolonial Exhibition of Australasia, Melbourne, 1866–67, Blundell & Co., Melbourne, 1867, p. 348.
2 ‘From the “Star” sixty years ago’, Star (Christchurch), 17 May 1928, p. 9.
3 Karl Chitham, Kolokesa U Mahina-Tuai and Damian Skinner, Crafting Aotearoa: A cultural history of making in New Zealand and the wider Oceania, Te Papa Press, Wellington, 2019, p. 134.
4 NZ Mail, 3 December 1881, p. 16.