Barkcloth made in the island cultures of the Pacific Ocean
Tapa cloth (or simply "tapa") is a barkcloth made in the islands of the Pacific Ocean, primarily in Tonga, Samoa and Fiji, but as far afield as Niue, Cook Islands, Futuna, Solomon Islands, Java, New Zealand, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and Hawaii (where it is called "kapa"). In French Polynesia it has nearly disappeared, except for some villages in the Marquesas.
General.
The word tapa is from Tahiti and the Cook Islands, where Captain Cook was the first European to collect it and introduce it to the rest of the world. The cloth is also known by a number of local names, although the term "tapa" is international and understood throughout the islands that use the cloth. In Tonga, the same cloth is known as ngatu, and here it is of great social importance to the islanders, often being given as gifts. In Samoa, it is called siapo, and in Niue it is hiapo. In Hawaiʻi, it is known as kapa. In Rotuma, a Polynesian island part of Fiji, it is called ʻuha and in other Fijian islands it is called masi. In the Pitcairn islands it was called 'ahu, and in New Zealand as aute. It is also known as tapia.
All these words give some clue to the origin. "Masi" could mean the (bark of the) dye-fig "(Ficus tinctoria)", endemic to Oceania, and probably the one originally used to make tapa. Somewhere in history, during the voyages of migration the "hiapo" or "siapo" was introduced from Southeast Asia, the paper mulberry tree ("Broussonetia papyrifera"). The bark of this tree is much better to use, and put the use of the dye-fig into oblivion. Only its name remained in Fiji. "Tapa" finally has the meaning of border or strip. It seems likely that before the glueing process became common to make large sheets (see below) only narrow strips were produced.
Tapa can be decorated by rubbing, stamping, stencilling, smoking (Fijian: "masi kuvui", "smoked barkcloth") or dyeing. The patterns of Tongan, Samoan, and Fijian tapa usually form a grid of squares, each of which contains geometric patterns with repeated motifs such as fish and plants, for example four stylised leaves forming a diagonal cross. Traditional dyes are usually black and rust-brown, although other colours are known.
In former times the cloth was primarily used for clothing, but now cotton and other textiles have replaced it. The major problem with tapa clothing is that the tissue loses its strength when wet and falls apart. However, it was better than grass-skirts, which usually are either heavier and harder or easily blown apart, but on the low coral atolls where the mulberry does not grow, people had no choice. It is also labour-intensive to manufacture. Tapa cloth was made by both the men and women in ancient times. An example is the Hawaiian men, who also made their own weapons.
Nowadays tapa is often worn on formal occasions such as weddings. Another use is as a blanket at night or for room dividers. It is highly prized for its decorative value and is often found hung on walls as decoration. In Tonga a family is considered poor, no matter how much money they have, if they do not have any tapa in stock at home to donate at life events like marriages, funerals and so forth. If the tapa was donated to them by a chief or even the royal family, it is more valuable. It has been used in ceremonial masks in Papua New Guinea and the Cook Islands (Mangian masks). It was used to wrap sacred objects, e.g., "God staffs" in the Cook Islands.
In New Zealand, presumably early Māori settlers created clothing from the "Broussonetia papyrifera" ("aute") trees that were brought to the islands to be cultivated, however no archaeological evidence of this exists. The New Zealand climate was not suited to cultivate large amounts of tapa cloth, so early Māori adopted the use of harakeke ("Phormium tenax", or New Zealand flax) instead. By the 1770s, the primary use of tapa cloth was to create a soft, white cloth used for fillets or in ear piercings by high status men, however barkcloth textiles disappeared from use in the early 19th Century, coinciding with the tree's disappearance from New Zealand. Experimental archaeology on reviving the techniques of this production were pioneered in the 2010s by Māori artist Nikau Hindin, a former student of Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
Fabrication.
The following describes the fabrication of Tapa cloth in Tonga, where it is still part of daily life. There may be small or large differences for other locations.
In Tonga "hiapo" is the name given to the paper mulberry tree. It is not usually grown in whole plantations, but portions of a yam or other vegetable garden are often set aside for it. They are cut and brought home where the first task is to strip the bark from the trees. The strips are about hand wide and person long. The wood left-over is named "mokofute". The bark consists of two layers; the outer bark is scraped or split off from the inner bark. This work is called "haʻalo". The outer bark is discarded; the inner bark, named "tutu" or "loututu", is left-over. It is dried in the sun before being soaked.
After this, the bark is beaten on a wooden "tutua" anvil using wooden mallets called "ike". In the beating the bark is made thinner and spread out to a width of about . This phase of the work is called "tutu" (or "tutua"). The mallets are flat on one side and have coarse and fine grooves on the other sides. First the coarse sides are used and, towards the end of the work, the flat side ("tā-tuʻa").
The continuous "thonk" beats of the tapa mallet is a normal sound in Tongan villages. If several women work together they can make a concert out of it. In that case there might be one who "tukipotu", beats the end of the "tutua" to set the rhythm.
When the strips are thin enough, several are taken and beaten together into a large sheet. Some starch from the "kumala", or "manioke" may be rubbed on places which are unwilling to stick. This part of the work is called "ʻopoʻopo", the glue is called "tou" and the resulting sheet of tapa is called "fetaʻaki". It then consists of two layers of strips in perpendicular direction, the upper one called "lauʻolunga" and the lower one "laulalo".
A knife or sharp shell, named "mutu", is used to trim the edges, and the pieces fallen off in this process are called "papanaki". When the white fetaʻaki is smoked brown, it is called "sala".
Often the women of a whole village work together on a huge sheet of tapa. A donation is made to the church or their chief at an important occasion. Such sheets are about wide and , or sometimes even long. The 15 meter pieces are called "launima" (meaning five-sheet, because the sheet is five squares), and the 30 m pieces are called "lautefuhi".
Ratzel (1896) described the fabrication of tapa as follows:
A circular cut is made with a shell in the bark above the root of the tree; the tree is broken off, and in a few days, when the stem is half-dry, the bark and bast are separated from it. The bast is then cleaned and macerated in water, after which it is beaten with the ribbed club on a wooden block. This beating enlivens a village in Tonga as threshing does in Europe. In half an hour the piece will have changed in shape from a strip almost to a square. The edges are snipped with shells, and a large number of the pieces are drawn separately over a semi-cylindrical wooden stamp, on which the pattern, worked in coco-fibre, is stretched and smeared with a fluid at once adhesive and colouring. On each a second and third layer is placed; and the piece, three layers thick, is coloured more strongly in the parts which are thrown into relief by the inequalities of the bed. Others are annexed to it both at the side and the end, until pieces a yard wide, and 20 to 25 yards long, are produced.
— Friedrich Ratzel, (1896)
Painting.
The "fetaʻaki" is almost always painted. It then becomes "ngatu", the Tongan word for the final product. The painting is done over the whole length, but only the central in the width direction. On both sides there is an unpainted border of about wide, which is called the "tapa" (in Tonga). To paint it, the sheets are put over a huge wooden drum covered with stencils or "kupesi" ("upeti" in Samoa). These stencils are made from coconut front midribs (or any other sticks of a few millimeter thick) and made in the pattern which will be used. There are a handful of standard "kupesi" designs, like the 'pine road' (the road from the palace to the royal cemetery), or the 'shield of Tonga', or the 'lion' (the king), or the 'dove' (the king as ruler), and more abstract figures like the 'Manulua' (two birds).
The tapa sheet is put over the drum and the women rub with force a dabber with some brown paint (made from the "koka" tree "(Bischofia javanica))" over the sheet. This work is called "tataʻi". Where they rub over a rib of the "kupesi" more paint will stick to that position while very little will stick elsewhere. In this way the basic pattern is put on the sheet. Once a part is done, they lift up the sheet and proceed to the next strip and so forth. Only when the whole sheet has been preprocessed, it will be spread out on the ground and with a brush (made from "Pandanus" seeds). The women will accentuate the faintly visible marks with some more generous paint, this time made from the "tongo", the mangrove "(Rhizophora mangle)". Both "koka" and "tongo" paint are always brown, but the latter is much darker. Black is not used in Tonga, although it is characteristic for Fiji.
It is customary that during the paint process lines are drawn on the "ngatu" along the width every or more. The "kupesi" too are made to the size that they will fit in the divisions thus made. Such a division is known as "langanga" and they are numbered (on the blank "tapa") from one to as many as needed for the whole length. When a smaller piece of ngatu is needed, the sheet is cut along a "langanga" division. A 4 to 6 "langanga" piece is called "folaʻosi". An 8-piece is "fātuua", while a 10 "langanga" piece of "ngatu" is known as "toka hongofulu". Less common are the double "fātuua", named "fātufā" or double of that again, the "fātuvalu".
These are the traditional "ngatu", as evidenced by the extensive vocabulary used (still many more terms exist). Nowadays for the tourist trade other sizes and designs can be made as well.
Citations.
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