The Blue Privilege

The Blue Privilege – The Last Tattooed Maori Women is a limited-edition reprint of Harry Sangl’s 1980 book, produced in association with Te Kuia Moko, an exhibition at Depot Artspace in 2019.

The book brings together Sangl’s remarkable painted portraits of 34 kuia who wore moko kauae. Originally launched at Auckland Museum in 1980, it has become an important historical record of the women and their stories.

I digitally reconstructed the complete book from the original, retaining its layout, typography and illustrated endpapers. The paintings were reproduced at high resolution, while considerable care went into matching the original typesetting, including paragraph depths and line endings where contemporary digital fonts differed slightly from those used in 1980.

As a historical document, the reprint also retains the Māori terminology and usage of the original text rather than updating it.