Donn Salt, veteran stone carver

DONN SALT is one of the country's longest-serving professional stone carvers. In this book extract, he recounts how he came to find his chosen artform.

I was born in Cambridge, New Zealand, in 1946 and when I was six months old the family moved to Rotorua. My father was a second-generation watchmaker, who, with my mother, operated a retail jewellery business.

Early childhood memories are strongly influenced by the organic forms created by the abundant thermal activity of the Rotorua region. Numerous mysterious pools of thick dark mud belching forth steaming sulphurous fumes were to be discovered in neglected stands of stunted teatree. Images from these formative experiences often surface through the subconscious and are manifest in much of today's carving. Extensive exposure to the rich Maori culture of Rotorua has also left an indelible mark.

Secondary education was brief. The strict academic curriculum of that era provided little encouragement for a young mind desiring development outside the accepted norm. At fifteen, I joined the family business and the following ten years were occupied in the servicing aspects of retail jewellery: cleaning clocks, minor jewellery repairs, pantograph engraving of trophies and Formica signs.

During my early twenties, a sense of restlessness and dissatisfaction grew with the realisation that retail jewellery held little interest for me. Spending my life operating a business which allows so little room for self-expression and personal freedom was totally abhorrent to me.

That restlessness persisted throughout the following three or four years while I searched unsuccessfully for alternative means to earn an income which would also satisfy the soul. The solution came from an unexpected source in 1968, when a friend of my father's showed him a "greenstone" tiki he had recently carved. (Previous experiments of mine with odd scraps of stone found around the workshop had proved fruitless. Jewellery tools are designed for working soft metal not hard stone.)

A short time later the incident was repeated. On this occasion the piece was a small "patu pounamu" or mere. Again I was out and missed seeing the carving but my interest was now well and truly aroused.

The difficulty in obtaining raw jade was an immediate problem. There was only one commercial factory working on the West Coast at the time and they were not interested in supplying anyone, stating that recovery from their own claims was hardly sufficient to meet their requirements. I was ecstatic when contacts within the trade managed to secure small samples of the material. From this moment on my life changed! The ensuing months were totally absorbed in fathoming the mysteries of carving jade. Literature on the subject was virtually non-existent.

Armed with meagre knowledge, experiments began. Innumerable hours were spent studying artefacts in the local museum. Unfortunately, they were beyond touch but subsequent access to pieces in private collections allowed much closer examination of Maori jades. With the assistance of a jeweller's eyeglass, important insights were gained.

As is the case with most learning situations, one initially emulates that which has preceded. Influenced by the work increasingly familiar to me, I finally managed, after six months and many false starts, to produce what I considered to be an acceptable piece. A simple "kaka poria," a parrot's leg ring. I promptly took it down to the museum curator, seeking his opinion. He appraised it for a few moments, looked up and stated, "This kaka poria was probably carved around the turn of the century."

The success of this piece, after so many months of trial and error, opened up a vast realm to explore. That insistent restlessness of previous years dissolved. At last, here was the place my conscience was most at ease. The challenge to work jade became an all-consuming passion. As experience accumulated and interest in producing another culture's art diminished, the possibilities of more abstract forms became apparent.

Throughout these endeavours I've experienced a subtle sense of involvement and guidance, as though intuitive knowledge is surfacing from the genetic memory of my Celtic origins. However, the source of my conscious perception and appreciation of jade is steeped in the old Maori understanding of the stone and forms the basis of my stone-working knowledge.

My most severe critic and mentor during my early development was my father, even though he had, at that stage, never carved himself and possessed virtually no knowledge of stone-working methods or techniques. I would proudly produce the most recent piece, which he would pick up, flicking down the ever-present eyeglass attached to his spectacles, and examine under four power or plus magnification. After a few moments I would hear him mumble in his gruff voice, "too many tool marks" or "you've left flat spots." Encouragement of this nature saw rapid development in the quality of the carving.

The appreciation for this perfection was reinforced when I discovered a passage in a book I was researching on Chinese jade. It stated that the two features most valued in a carving were that the piece was so well carved it was too perfect to have been produced by mere human hands but must be the product of spirits - such a piece is called a "spirit" or "demon carving" - and that the stone should be carved in such a manner as to capture an essence of life, as if one could expect the carving to move.

* An edited extract from the newly revised edition of Stone, Bone and Jade by Donn Salt, David Bateman. $49.95.