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, Sulawesi, 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. In Melville's Typee, the ship Dolly enters the harbor of Nukuheva where it is met by "swimming nymphs ... their adornments were completed by passing a few loose folds of white tappa, in a modest cincture, around the waist."Melville, Herman: Typee, 1968: Evanston and Chicago, Northwestern University Press and the Newberry Library, pp. 14-15.
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 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 Hawaii, it is known as kapa. In Rotuma, a Polynesian island part of Fiji, it is called uha and in other Fijian islands it is called masi. In the Pitcairn islands it was called ahu, and in New Zealand was known as aute. It is also known as tapia.
During voyages of migration the paper mulberry tree (Broussonetia papyrifera) known as hiapo or siapo was introduced from Southeast Asia. Tapa cloth was present in Western Polynesia (Fiji, Tonga and Samoa) by about 1000 AD and then spread throughout the Pacific as people voyaged to islands further afield. Tapa also 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 modern 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. Tapa is also labour-intensive to manufacture. Tapa cloth was made by both men and women in ancient times, for example in Hawaii.
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. It has been used in ceremonial masks in Papua New Guinea and the Cook Islands (Mangaian masks). It was used to wrap sacred objects, e.g., "God staffs" in the Cook Islands.
In some places, artists are reviving tapa-making and creating modern interpretations of the art using new techniques or designs.
Fabrication
Tonga Tapa cloth is or ngatu still a part of daily life in Tonga. In Tonga a family is considered poor, regardless 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.
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. Trees are cut down and the bark is stripped off. The strips are about 10 cm wide and up to 180 cm long. The bark consists of two layers; the outer bark is scraped or split off from the inner bark. The outer bark is discarded, and the inner bark, named tutu or loututu, is dried in the sun before being soaked.
After this, the bark is beaten on a wooden anvil (tutua) using wooden mallets called ike. In the beating the bark is made thinner and spread out to a width of about . The mallets are smooth 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 smooth side is used. 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 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. A starch paste from the kumala or manioke may be rubbed on places which are unwilling to stick. The resulting sheet of tapa is called fetaaki, consisting of two layers of strips in at right angles. 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 m pieces are called launima (meaning five-sheet, because the sheet is five squares), and the 30 m pieces are called lautefuhi.
The German ethnographer Friedrich Ratzel described the fabrication of tapa in an 1896 publication:
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 RatzelThe fetaaki is almost always painted. It then becomes ngatu, the Tongan word for the final product. Painting is done over the whole length, but only the central in the width. On both sides there is an unpainted border of about wide, which in Tonga is called the tapa. To paint the sheet, it is draped over a huge wooden drum or kupesi (upeti in Samoa) covered with stencils. These stencils are made from coconut frond 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).
Once the tapa sheet is put over the drum, 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 tatai. 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. When the whole sheet has been processed, it is spread out on the ground and painted 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 of Fijian tapa.
It is customary that during the painting process lines are drawn on the ngatu along the width every or more. The kupesi are made to the size that 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 folaosi. 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. Nowadays for the tourist trade other sizes and designs can be made as well.
Samoa Tapa cloth is known as siapo in the Samoan archipelago (Samoa and American Samoa). Siapo has traditionally been used for clothing, burial shrouds, bed covers, curtains and ceremonial garments. It is also often given as a gift at weddings, funerals and formal events. There are two forms of siapo: siapo 'elei or siapo tasina (the rubbing method) and siapo mamanu (the freehand method).
Siapo is made from the bark of the paper mulberry tree (u'a). The tree is harvested when it is about one year old and the trunk is one to two inches in diameter. The bark is peeled from the tree and the outer bark stripped off with a sharp knife. The inner bark layer is moistened and then scraped with clam shells of varying coarseness (pipi, pae, and 'asi). This process removes any remaining bark or green growth and softens and spreads the fibres of the bark. Next, the bark is beaten with a wooden mallet (i'e) over a wooden anvil (tutua).The i'e is four-sided, with two smooth sides and two grooved sides. The tutua is a log about eight inches wide and three to six feet long, used by one to three women at a time. As the u'a is beaten it becomes softer and wider. When the beating is finished, the u'a is stretched out flat to dry.
Siapo 'elei (the rubbing method) uses a board known as an upeti which has a design carved into it. The upeti used to be hand-sewn from leaves, fibers and bamboo, but these were fragile. After the introduction of wood carving tools, leaf upeti fell out of use. Today upeti designs are carved onto wooden planks or boards. A swab is wiped over the board and the u'a (dried piece of cloth) is placed on top of the board and rubbed with a pad of dye to bring out the underlying design carved into the board. Red clay is used to darken the design. The u'a is wiped over with a starchy adhesive made from arrowroot. Small holes are patched and then a second layer of u'a is placed on top of the first layer and the rubbing process repeated. The piece is then lifted from the board and left to dry. Once dry, the design on the u'a is highlighted by painting over sections with dye. Larger pieces can be created by joining smaller sections together. A large piece of siapo 'elei tapa used in formal ceremonies is known as siapo vala.
Siapo mamanu (the freehand method) is newer than siapo 'elei and made primarily for tourists to hang up as artwork. It does not use an upeti. Formerly, pieces of u'a were stretched over boards using a temporary glue which allowed the artist to remove the piece from the board when completed. The u'a was then hand-painted with whatever design the artist wished. Modern siapo mamanu pieces are created by stretching and glueing the u'a over a piece of wood of any shape, which forms part of the art: the u'a is not removed from the wood after painting.
Thirteen symbolic design elements were traditionally used in siapo. Two have since fallen out of use and another is rarely used. The design elements represent various plants and flowers, birds, the trochus shell, starfish and nets. The different elements are combined into many patterns.