Material and Manufacture
While the term mere was, and is, used in some regions to refer exclusively to clubs made from pounamu, in other regions, mere was more broadly used to refer to patu of a similar shape and design made from hardwood (meremere, mere rakau), whalebone (patu paraoa), or stone (patu onewa) - in these areas, a mere made from greenstone was known as a mere pounamu or patu pounamu.
The pounamu used to make a mere was carefully chosen to be flawless and to have a good colour. A block of greenstone was first rough cut using pieces of quartzite combined with sand and water. Dressing of the surface was done with fine sandstone and pieces of very hard smooth stone. Due to the toughness of greenstone, mere pounamu were able to made thinner than other similar patu made from stone, however this made the process of manufacture slow and arduous. The creation and finishing of a mere pounamu is claimed to have sometimes taken more than one generation to complete.
Read more about this topic: Mere (weapon)
Famous quotes containing the words material and, material and/or manufacture:
“Our life on earth is, and ought to be, material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage our materialism and carnality properly; they are still entangled with the desire for ownership.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“And what avails it that science has come to treat space and time as simply forms of thought, and the material world as hypothetical, and withal our pretension of property and even of self-hood are fading with the rest, if, at last, even our thoughts are not finalities, but the incessant flowing and ascension reach these also, and each thought which yesterday was a finality, to-day is yielding to a larger generalization?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Yes, that’s what I needed. Living flesh from humans for my experiments. What difference did it make if a few people had to die? Their flesh taught me how to manufacture arms, legs, faces that are human. I’ll make a crippled world whole again.”
—Robert Tusker, and Michael Curtiz. Wells (Preston Foster)