Beginning of a Career

It was at this period that John, the younger brother (born 1912) appeared on the scene. It was the middle of the depression; his job in the bush had just cut out, and John came to the school, not as a student, but just to help his brother. In the end they paid him five shillings a week. At the time of John's arrival the school was busy on the house ‘Te Hono ki Rarotonga’ which stands at Tokomaru Bay. This was the first house to which John Taiapa contributed as a learner. Around this time, Sir Apirana Ngata engaged a new instructor in the school to teach adze work: Eramiha Kapua from Te Teko, descendant of a famous Ngati Terawhai carving family. This teacher is remembered by both the Taiapas with much gratitude and affection. There were seven brothers in Eramiha's family who were all carvers. Between them they carved the house in the Christchurch exhibition of 1907.

Eramiha Kapua himself was a strict carver of the old school who knew all the tapu observances concerning carving. He never blew the chips away, he did not allow women near the carvings, nor any smoking on the job. However, he told his young students that they would be wiser not to bother with tapu. His reason was that, not knowing precisely what the tapu was, they might easily make a mistake and that would be worse than if they did not burden their mind with it at all. Therefore, both Pine and John abandoned all idea of tapu in their work.

Te Hono Ki Rarotonga was the work of five carvers; at the head Eramiha Kapua, and helping him: Pine and John Taiapa, and the two men from Waikato: Wiremu Poutapu and Waka Kereama. At that stage, the Rotorua instructor and the other two Arawa carvers left the School. The kowhaiwhai for the house was done by a European signwriter, Jack Wright, there being no qualified Maori available. The women of Tokomaru Bay did the tukutuku work themselves.

The opening of this house was especially dramatic because Makea. Tinirau, paramount chief of the Cook Islands, with his party, had been invited to emphasise the importance of the link between Rarotonga and the descendants of the Horouta canoe. Makea opened the house and then asked Ngata whether he could have a similar carved meeting house in Rarotonga. Ngata asked the Cook Island chief to leave two of his men behind to learn the art of carving and so it was that Aiotua Tuarau and Wili Marama stayed in New Zealand and joined the School of Maori Arts and Crafts. The Raretonga house was never built, although money was raised for it; the project ended with the death of old Makea Tinirau.

All this happened in 1934; shortly afterwards work began on the monumental Waitangi meeting house. When that was finished, in 1937, John Taiapa considered himself a fully trained carver. But not the whole of the three years after Tokomaru Bay were devoted to the Waitangi house. They were in fact exceptionally busy years for the men of the Arts and Crafts school—it was then that the house at Otaki was built, and the one at Waitara, and the Mangahanea dining hall at Ruatoria, and the Sir James Carroll Memorial Hall, and a start was also made on the carvings in the Te Aute College assembly hall.