The Carved Pare: A Maori Mirror of the Universe

This unique book documents for the first time Maori pare (carved door lintels) from marae throughout New Zealand and from overseas museums. Photographs of pare have been sourced from around the world and are beautifully presented with descriptions, stories and waiata about the hapa whose whare (house) they adorn. ‘The pare is an important boundary between the world outside the meeting house and the world inside. It marks a tapu threshold into what is often called Te Poho, or body of the ancestor who is the ancestor house, te whare tipuna. For the tribe and visitors, to enter the house is to go into the body, symbolically, to change one’s state’.