Stylogenyin the style of Pacific Barkcloth (Tapa) Design

Traditions & vernacular · 1700–present · Oceania

Pacific Barkcloth (Tapa) Design

Also known as Tapa, Ngatu (Tonga), Siapo (Samoa), Masi (Fiji), Kapa (Hawai'i), Hiapo (Niue)

Barkcloth beaten from paper-mulberry inner bark and decorated across Polynesia and Fiji for gift exchange at weddings, funerals and chiefly investitures. Motifs are transferred rather than simply drawn: rubbed over pattern boards in Tonga and Samoa, stencilled in Fiji, stamped in Hawai'i, then sharpened by hand. The palette is earth browns and soot black on cream bark, inside ruled squares and bands on cloths that can run past twenty metres.

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A bordered grid in black, ochre and rust on a mottled tan ground contains repeated sea turtles, diagonal leafy fronds, pointed rosettes, and suns above wavy water. Bands of triangles and diamonds divide the panels and surround the design.
AI-generated by Stylogeny from the style’s design choices. Not a real or historical work.

Use it with care

Tapa is women's ceremonial wealth, made collectively and presented at weddings, funerals and the investiture of chiefly titles; particular motifs commemorate events, lineages and royalty, and some designs belong to families, villages or chiefly lines. Commission and pay tapa makers and their work groups (such as the koka'anga in Tonga), credit the island and the maker, and do not lift motifs from museum cloths onto products or treat Tongan, Samoan, Fijian and Hawaiian traditions as one interchangeable 'Polynesian' pattern.

01

How it works

  • Rule the cloth into squares or bands first and fill each with one repeated motif.
  • Transfer motifs indirectly, by rubbing dye over relief pattern boards, stencilling or stamping, and accept the soft, broken edges this gives.
  • Overpaint key lines freehand to sharpen the transferred design, adding borders, numerals or commemorative emblems.
  • Restrict colour to earth browns, red-brown and soot black on the cream bark ground.
  • Work at monumental, communal scale: one presentation cloth made by a women's work group can run to dozens of metres.

Western Polynesia and Fiji (Tonga, Samoa, Fiji), with Hawai'i, Niue, Tahiti, the Cook Islands, Futuna and 'Uvea

02

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition
Space & hierarchy
Typography
Colour
Form & shape
Surface & texture
Ornament
Imagery
Medium & production
Tone & intent
Avoids
Full polychrome, Fluorescent & neon, Gradients, Naturalistic depiction, Illusion of depth, Straight photography, Gloss & highlights

Palette

  • #e9dcc0
  • #8a3b1f
  • #3b2416
  • #161311
  • #b9772f

Typefaces

  • Freehand-painted numerals and capitals on ngatu, from length markers to commemorative inscriptions

  • Faces with full support for Tongan, Samoan, Fijian and Hawaiian orthographies (ʻokina and macrons), e.g. Noto Sans, for accompanying text

Known for

  • Tongan ngatu made by koka'anga women's work parties over kupesi pattern boards

    Te Papa collection

  • Fijian masi kesa decorated with cut stencils

    Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge

  • Samoan siapo 'elei rubbed on upeti boards and freehand siapo mamanu; Mary Jewett Pritchard

    American Samoa

  • Hawaiian kapa stamped with 'ohe kapala bamboo stamps

  • Alexander Shaw, A Catalogue of the Different Specimens of Cloth Collected in the Three Voyages of Captain Cook

    1787

  • John Pule and Nicholas Thomas, Hiapo

    Past and Present in Niuean Barkcloth (2005)

03

Make something in this style

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04

Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

Before it

The style it grew out of, and the styles it borrowed from.

Nothing earlier is recorded: in the atlas it is a starting point.

This stylePacific Barkcloth (Tapa) Design1700–present · Oceania

After it

The styles that grew out of it.

No later style in the atlas grew out of it yet.

Alike in its design choices

Styles that make many of the same choices, related or not, besides those above.

05

Real works

Artefacts in museums, libraries and archives that show the style, linked at their source.

  • Panel (Masi Kesa)mid- to late 19th century · The Metropolitan Museum of Art
  • Ngatu fuatanga (tapa cloth)Ungatea Faiva, with the Mofuike Women's Work Group · 1978 · Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (FE010739)
  • Panelearly 1800s · The Cleveland Museum of Art
  • Wedding Tapa (Gatu Vakaviti)20th century · Los Angeles County Museum of Art (M.2010.160); image via Wikimedia Commons
  • Ngatu fuatangaOta'ota Fahina Society · 2014 · Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (FE013023)

06

Sources

  1. Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Ngatu (Tongan barkcloth): https://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/topic/1114
  2. Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, Masi: https://maa.cam.ac.uk/masi
  3. Wikipedia: Tapa cloth

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