To Māori, paua are recognised taonga, or treasure, esteemed both as kai moana (seafood) and as a valued resource for traditional and contemporary arts and crafts. Paua are frequently used to represent the eyes in Māori carvings and traditionally are associated with the stars, or whetu the eyes of ancestors that gaze down from the night sky.
The paua is iconic in New Zealand: its black muscular foot is considered a delicacy, and the shell is frequently used in jewelry. It is known as abalone in North America.
Highly polished New Zealand pāua shells are extremely popular as souvenirs with their striking blue, green, and purple iridescence. Transporting unprocessed abalone shells out of New Zealand is illegal.
(from Wikipedia)
4 comments:
How beautiful!!
EXACTLY the colours of the yarn I have been using for Le Scarf!
xo CGF
actually i do dream about those chairs a lot, i handled 750 chairs 53 times per year for 28 years...i am in the over 1 million chaairs handleed club...mcdonalds has cooked at one time a missillon hambugers, and i have handled 1 million orange chairs
The shades in those shells are beautiful - my favourite colours. My Mum had a brooch made from those but I have no idea what happened to it.
How come you are now MERINZ? not mrinz?
The paua colours are spectacular. The photo doesn't do them justice.
Merinz/mrinz - same person! Long story.
For years and years I used Meri as my internet name, then found there was another person of the same name, so added nz to the end of it.
Then there was another merinz for a short time so I left out the 'e'. Now I have decided to go back to my usual version!
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