Two new exhibitions celebrating the people, culture, and legacy of the Tasman Mill have opened this month at the Sir James Fletcher Kawerau Museum.

Inside the Kawerau District Library, the gallery is showcasing The Unofficial Gallery: Caricatures from Tasman Mill – a lively collection of artworks by Tasman contractor Herbie Pukeroa and mill employee Rob Morrison.

Drawn mostly on “pinched” off-cuts of pulp sheet, these caricatures were never meant for a formal exhibition.

Instead, they created an “unofficial gallery” within the Roll Shop and other departments, featuring raw, humorous, and deeply personal portraits that captured the camaraderie and humour of mill life.

Each sketch tells its own story – of inside jokes, workplace banter, and enduring friendships – revealing the humanity and sense of community that thrived among the men and women who kept the Tasman Mill running for decades.

The second exhibition, Working Style: Work and Leisure Wear from Tasman and Norske Skog, is displayed in the Jellicoe Court windows.

This exhibit draws from the Kawerau Museum’s collection of clothing and accessories from Tasman Pulp and Paper and Norske Skog.

It highlights the mill’s diverse range of branded clothing – from overalls, raincoats, to ties and jackets, to casual leisure wear like baseball caps, jackets, and jeans.

Though much of the clothing was designed for work, Tasman’s logo also found its way into the wardrobes of employees and their families beyond the factory gates.

Most of the Tasman clothing in the museum’s collection dates from the mid-1970s to the 1980s, featuring the classic green lowercase logo that replaced the original sailing ship emblem – itself later succeeded when the mill became part of Fletcher Challenge Paper in the mid-1990s.

These exhibitions can be viewed over summer.