Rākai Jade

Rākai Jade is a Rotorua carving collective founded by Lewis Gardiner, one of New Zealand's most recognised pounamu artists. Lewis won the biennial Mana Pounamu Awards for contemporary Māori design in 1999, 2001 and 2003, and in 2009 was appointed the inaugural Tumu Whakairo (Head of School) of Te Takapū o Rotowhio, the National Stone and Bone Carving School at the New Zealand Māori Arts and Crafts Institute. After stepping back from that role in 2013 to focus on his own artistic development, he brought together a cooperative of carvers, many of them his former students, built around a shared approach of pairing traditional practice with contemporary application.

Today the Rākai team creates handcrafted taonga sold through their Rotorua showroom and online store, and also runs guided "Carve Your Own" experiences, where visitors are taken through the full process of shaping their own pounamu piece under the guidance of an experienced carver, typically over a full day.

The studio's work has reached a wider audience too: in 2018, a piece carved by Lewis with contributions from carvers Whare Bidois and Joel Marsters was presented as a gift to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex for the birth of their first child.