New Zealand Maori Greenstone ‘Hei-Tiki’

Period: 1700-1900

Origin: New Zealand

Medium: Nephrite, Jade

Literature: The Hei-Tiki carved of green nephrite, a form of jade, is perhaps the best known of all Maori artefacts. It was regarded by the Maori as an amuletic memento of a deceased ancestor or a succession of ancestors through whose hands it had passed from generation to generation. Hei-Tiki were highly valued for their direct contact with the ‘mana’ of the great ones of the past. Many were given personal names, now sadly lost, and when they were brought on to a ‘marae’, the courtyard of a meeting house, they were often greeted as people as though the ancestors they represented were physically present.