Clive Fugill - Master Carver

This week, Māori master carver Clive Fugill was named a Companion of the NZ Order of Merit.

Back in 2017, he told Justine Murray about his lifelong fascination with carving.

• Related: Clive Fugill on the evolution of Māori carving tools

At the age of 9, Clive was given a set of tools by his parents and started carving in the shed at home.

Showing talent in art class at school, he was also intrigued by the slides of Māori artefacts shown in Social Studies.

"I'd see these things. the shape and the form and ooh, something fascinated me about them."

Then on a rainy day on one Christmas holiday in Dargaville, Clive's father suggested the family visit a private museum of Māori artefacts.

They discovered an elderly gentleman who'd converted a bedroom into a museum with cloaks, toki (stone adze), kauri gum carvings and mere (weapons)

The man let young Clive hold a stone toki.

"That thing just blew me away at that time - the shape the form and the feel of this weapon and how it was made, it fascinated me. It's fascinated me for years."

Later Clive developed his skills with a neighbour who was a carver and suggested enrol at the Carving School of the NZ Arts and Crafts Institute.

He says that at first his identity was questioned because he didn't look Māori.

"When I applied for the school, they all looked at me and said, Well, you know, you're a Pakeha. You can't come in here. Dad said he knows his iwi, he knows his hapu he knows the rest of it. And they said oh yeah, but he doesn't look Maori."

It was only when Clive's father took in a photo of five generations of his family, that the board was convinced of his heritage. In the photo was Clive's great-great-great grandmother who was full-blooded Māori and wore moko kauae (tattooed chin).

After entering the carving school in 1967, Clive was appointed as Tohunga Whakairo (Master Carver) of the school in 1983.

As Master Carver, Clive has worked on a number of projects around the country and travelled to Thailand, Japan and the United States to share his work.

He's most proud of having passed on knowledge to other Māori.

"We've helped a lot of iwi with houses and also the teaching of students. We've contributed immensely to teaching people to carve, young men to carve, and taking that knowledge back to their own.

"That's been the problem in the past. A lot of our people passed away and took all the knowledge with them. I don't want that happening to me, I want to be able to have that knowledge still around for our people to use, particularly our young people can use it in the future. So we keep our knowledge and our arts and crafts culture alive. And that's what's kept me here all these years is that - keeping it alive."

Clive always carries a little notebook in his pocket because, he says, "you never know what you'll learn".

"I always worry about the things I don't know, not the things I know ... You're learning all the time. That's the beauty of it. … It's what makes life is learning, you're learning all the time. I think the day I walked in the front door of this establishment was the day I started to learn, I never stopped."