Reshaping Kiwiana

BY REBECCA PALMER

Decked out in her great-grandmother's royal blue, full-skirted dress, Kate Burgess looks the picture of a 1950s housewife. It's an image the 24-year-old feels appropriate to her lifestyle. "I sit at home all day sewing, and I cook and clean for my man," she laughs.

But unlike her seamstress predecessors, the Wellington woman offers monsters for sale.

Her brightly coloured monster friend dolls are lovingly sewn from scrap material and buttons that Kate hunts out at second-hand stores.

The monsters have distinct identities (including businessmen complete with ties) and bygone names - Petunia, Florence, Chadwick and Hubert - found in her mother's baby-naming book.

Burgess is among a wave of young craftspeople passionate about producing New Zealand-made products.

"I'm so sick of imported crap that you just know some little kid in slave labour was paid 20 cents an hour to make," she says. "The awareness of that has been so bad in this country.

"But then there's a lot of people who are realising that it's important to be supporting New Zealand-made, supporting something where you know the person has come up with the idea themselves and is working in reasonable conditions."

She feels Kiwiana has moved beyond obvious New Zealand motifs such as kiwi and tui. "I think it's sort of been bashed to death a little bit."

A quick glance at New Zealand design and craft websites, such as Felt, endemicworld.com and CleverBastards (A web portal promoting New Zealand art and design), make it clear Kiwiana has moved beyond mass-produced Buzzy Bees, paua shell jewellery and plastic tiki.

Instead, there are nostalgic cushions recycled from wool blankets, bags made from old parachutes and billboards, New Zealand-themed wooden USB sticks, retro T-shirts and one-off pieces of jewellery.

Paul Kayser, "head bastard" for website CleverBastards, says demand for New Zealand-designed and made goods has grown rapidly since the site started two years ago, particularly from Kiwis abroad. He attributes the growth to a high standard of original ideas and craftsmanship - not just churning out Kiwiana lookalike products - and New Zealanders shedding their old cultural cringe.

The internet has helped take Kiwi design to the world. He tells the story of an Italian blogger who recently spotted Aucklander Lindsay Pemberton's tea bangles, upcycled from old teacups, on CleverBastards. As a result, Italian magazines have started running stories on her.

Burgess made her first few monsters a couple of years ago, inspired by antique buttons given to her by her grandmother. For a while the creatures went no further than the top of her wardrobe, where a crafty friend eventually spotted them. He suggested she try to sell them at craft fairs, and her success encouraged her to make more.

She quickly used up all her grandmother's buttons, something she now regrets. "Antique buttons are really awesome. You just don't get buttons like that anymore."

She talks wistfully of bulk purchases from shops in small towns such as Woodville.

In the middle of last year, she quit her day job as a pharmacy assistant to concentrate fulltime on her craft business, Stitch Lips.

It doesn't yet generate enough money to live off - "I have a very supportive partner" - but she hopes it will in a couple of years. Her range, which she sells at weekend markets and online through Kiwi design and craft website Felt, has expanded to aprons and sand- filled slinky snakes that can be used as doorstops. "They actually sell as well as the dolls. It's quite retro, it's something you could remember from your childhood."

Her monster friends are popular with tourists keen to buy something unusual and New Zealand-made, she says.

"I've had people from all over the place take them back as keepsakes for their children."

Monsters also star in the quirky creations of Deb Allen, another young Wellingtonian who has made craft her fulltime job. The fine arts graduate's Boomonster trophy heads mimic the animal heads mounted by hunters.

She markets them with lines such as: "Hang this little girl on your wall and you will never have another monster under your bed again."

Allen, 24, was inspired by her five- year-old niece, who was afraid of the dark and struggling to sleep. She decided to create a monster that "I caught and mounted so it would scare away all the other monsters".

They have proven just as popular with adults. One woman bought one for her husband to add to his wall of mounted animal heads.

From her house and studio in Johnsonville, she also makes toys, bags and wood and resin jewellery featuring native birds inspired by nature and the nearby bush. She sells the range through shops, at markets and online.

"I think the boom in online shopping is great for handmade and New Zealand- made products," she says.

Kiwis from all sorts of backgrounds have been getting in on the act. Surfing enthusiasts Paul and Michelle Zaloum started their own online business, Surfbaby, in November last year after the birth of their daughter, Molly-Rose, now 11 months. Michelle has a sales and advertising background; Paul is first mate on an oil rig out of Melbourne.

"We have such a strong surf culture here that we wanted to supply something Kiwi-flavoured and a bit different for surfing parents that wasn't already on the market," Michelle says.

Top-sellers from their beach and surf-themed range include Yeahnah T-shirts, and those bearing the nostalgic "Longest drink in town" milkshake logo.

The Kiwiana trend has been bubbling away for some time now, and doesn't show any sign of slowing down, she says.

"I think the coolest thing is that Kiwis are always plucking things from our nostalgic past, and new products are always appearing on our shelves."

WE LOVE

Felt.co.nz

Toggle.co.nz

Endemicworld.com

Cleverbastards.co.nz

Surfbaby.co.nz

- © Fairfax NZ News