AY Honors/Tapa Cloth/Answer Key

1. What are the main uses of Tapa cloth?

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 is just like paper: it looses all its strength when wet and falls apart. Still 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.

Nowadays tapa is still often worn on formal occasions such as weddings. Another use is as blanket at night. It is also highly prized for its decorative value and is often found used to hang on the walls as a 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 crises like marriages, funerals and so forth. If the tapa was ever donated to them by a chief or even the royal family, the more valuable it is.

3. Know the trees used for making Tapa cloth in your area.

Originally, tapa cloth was most likely made from the bark of the Dye-fig (Ficus tinctoria), endemic to Oceania. Somewhere in history, during the voyages of migration the, the Paper mulberry tree (Broussonetia papyrifera) was introduced from Southeast Asia. The bark of this tree is much better to use, and put the use of the Dye-fig into oblivion.

4. a. Explain the steps in making tapa cloth and then demonstrate your knowledge by making a 1/2 meter square tapa cloth.

As Tonga is the country where tapa is still a part of daily life, the following description is given for that country. Although on other islands the overall process is about the same, there still might be several smaller or larger differences.

In Tonga hiapo is the name given to the paper-mulberry tree. People have bunches of them growing in a corner of their plantations. 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 so left over is named mokofute. The bark consists of 2 layers. In the next step the outer bark is to be scraped or split off from the inner bark. This work is called ha'alo. The outerbark is discarded, the innerbark, named tutu or loututu, is left over. It is first 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 25 cm. 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 still a normal sound in the 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 strips are taken together 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 to the church or their chief at an important occasion. Such sheets are about 3 meters wide and 15, or 30, or sometimes even 60 meters long. The 15 meter pieces are called launima (meaning: five-sheet, because the sheet is 5 squares), and the 30 meter pieces are called lautefuhi.