Chart of five grey Maori design motifs with captions: koru spiral, hei-matau fish hook, moana wave, mangopare hammerhead and a kowhaiwhai band pattern.

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Maori motif chart: koru, hei-matau and more

Black and grey · Flash

A horizontal chart showing five Maori design motifs, each with a bold name and a short caption beneath it. The first four are single shapes drawn with grey gradient shading: a spiral (koru), a fish hook (hei-matau), an S-shaped wave (moana) and a hammerhead form (mangopare). The fifth, kowhaiwhai, is a rounded panel of dark interlocking curved patterns with a horizontal band across the centre.

Spiral Wave Pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The first batch was already proving when I got the lights on, forty koru rolls for Mrs Teape's grandson's christening, each one rolled tight from the tail inward until it looked like a fern unfurling on a wet hillside. Nan taught me to use the flat of my palm, never the fingertips, or the spiral splits in the oven. I had the trays lined and the timer set before the sky over the car park had even thought about going grey.

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Tane came in at quarter past four with rain sheeting off his hood and news that the bridge on the coast road was under a foot of water. He would have to go round by the quarry, which meant the rolls would be cold by the time they reached the hall. He dropped a carrier bag of butter on the bench and stood there dripping, watching me flick flour across the steel the way Nan used to, in one long soft wave, so the dust settled in ridges.

We worked without talking. I made the last dozen wider and looser, pressing a hook into the fold of each with the blunt end of a skewer, a curve that caught the light when the racks came out. Tane wrapped them in clean cloths and stacked them in the van with the care of a man carrying eggs across a mud track.

Mrs Teape rang the bakery at nine, her voice unsteady. The baby had slept through the whole ceremony, she said, but nobody could stop talking about the rolls. Tane said nothing when I told him. He just grinned and held up his thumb, where a small curl of dough was still stuck from the shaping.