Stationery

-          Ring binders

-          Paper

-          Cardboard

-          Files

Art Materials

-          Mosaic

-          Paint  

-          Test pots

-          Oil painting boards

-          Tissue paper

-          Wrapping paper

-          Packaging materials

-          Bubblewrap

-          Sheet foam

-          OBO foam

      -          Polystyrene 

Craft Materials

-          Knitting needles

-          Patterns

-          Cross stitch

-          Wool

-          Crochet

-          Textiles

-          Zips

-          Buttons

-          Needles

      -          Thread 

Gifts and Gift ideas

      -          Puppets

-          Pincushions

-          Woollen hats

-          Chalkboards

-          Game boards

-          Hula hoops

-          Games

-          Puzzles

-          Dog mats

-          Cards for all occasions 

      -          Wearable arts 

'Mariette' Rice Cooker (new product)

Check out our Craft Group's energy saving "cooker" called a 'mariette'. Finish cooking your rice without using any power. Another of our 'least footprint' products made from recycled materials

Native Timbers Box Set

When we at Community Arts decided on a set of native timbers to commemorate days gone by and use as a teaching tool for our environmental workshops, we knew that the hardest thing would be finding enough different ones to fill the Box. Some are still readily available from recycling places. Others are rarities and chanced upon in the most unlikely places. But we persisted and here it is! We hope you will enjoy having this little heirloom from our past. Make sure you treasure it and pass it on to your childrens' children because it may be the last of its kind. A record of fine New Zealand timbers, now 'extinct'. 

A generation ago the biodiversity of our forests provided timbers suitable for every purpose. Despite the massive alienation and deforestation which occured almost a century earlier, the forests remaining until the early 1960's supplied well over half the demand. Exotic timbers however were starting to fill the gaps, contributing 45% by 1958. Then in the early '70's lobbying and direct action by environmental groups saw the end of continued production. Although this had dramatic social and economic consequences, the political impact meant the end of milling native timber on State land. 

In the space of thirty years virtually the only native timber available came from remnant forests on private land, recycled timbers or logs exposed in river beds. The principal timbers -  rimu, matai and tawhai - have been entirely replaced by pines, macrocarpa and eucalypts. 

The conservation debate was won on the need to preserve what remained of the native forests for their natural beauty, their part in the eco-system, their recreation potential and the conservation of watersheds. Ecologists now tell us that even some of the lowland remnants are not large enough to ever again play a part in the bio diversity of New Zealand. This means that for native timbers to ever again become important economically, it would require major long term plantings. 

Because most of the natives have at least three names (Maori, common and botanical) it can get complicated. So we have named each one in the Box by its Maori name, but have included its other names in the Chart below.Most of the common names were given by European settlers, which meant that names like 'beech' and 'pine' were used. 

For those of you who need some assistance pronouncing Māori, here is a brief method. For those of you who do not, we apologise and suggest you skip to the Chart!

When endeavouring to pronounce Māori, break each word into its syllables. Every vowel ends a syllable. For example, ka/hi/ka/te/a. When two or more vowels occur together, give each its full sound value before you try to run them together.

For each name on the timbers in the Box, it is important that the accent falls on the right syllable. The stress or macron is placed over the appropriate vowel(s) as in the Chart.

The vowels have short and long sounds, the latter normally written with a macron, but sometimes by doubling the vowel. We have used the macron here:

a          as in up                                               ā as in father

e          as in egg                                              ē as in air

i           as in me                                               ī as in bee

o          as in autumn                                       ō  like or, as in paw

u          as in two                                              ū as in rule

The common vowel pairings in Māori are pronounced variably, but a guide might be:

ou                    as in the English vowel sound ‘o’

au                    as in the word toe, but shorter

ae                    as in aye

ai                     as in rice

The consonants are sounded as they are in English, except for the ‘r’, the sound of which is said to lie between the l and r consonants and the ‘wh’, which, for those hapu who use it, resembles the English ‘f’ sound. For the consonant blend ‘ng’, the nearest sound in English is the ‘ng’ pairing in the words ‘sing’ and ‘thing’.

Acknowledgements

We wish to acknowledge all the voluntary effort which has gone into making this Community Arts PN project possible, particularly our Arts Recycling Centre volunteers and UCOL’s Furniture Design Faculty.

Thanks go also to Todd Taiepa and He Kupenga Hao i te Reo for checking the Maori context and language respectively.