Object 20

Tahitian tapa

Hunterian Museum Collection, GLAHM E.457/3

Art Historical Description

This Tahitian breadfruit-bast fabric of the Pateatea type is supple and strong, and bears the diagnostic characteristics of a high quality breadfruit material: A light greyish-beige colour with some darker brownish-orange fibre bundles occasionally to be seen, tending to concentrate in the ridges of the linear beater mark (which is a moderately fine eight grooves per centimetre).

The eight stripes of dye in one half of the sample appear to have been achieved by folding the cloth and then dipping the folded edge into a dye bath – here in two alternating colours. The resulting tricolour rainbow effect produces a cloth of strikingly similar appearance to that worn as a pareu skirt in Sydney Parkinson’s 1769 watercolour of the Tahitian Chief Mourner; Tahitian mythology frames the rainbow as the maro loincloth of the creator god Ta‘aroa, and other elements of the known Chief Mourner’s costumes are similarly rainbow-striped.

We know that some Tahitian cloths in the Hunterian collection were acquired by William Hunter from John Fothergill, and by Fothergill from the estate of Sydney Parkinson’s brother Stanfield; it is very tempting, therefore, to speculate that this fabric may represent an object of that type and function. All that can be said with certainty at this stage, however, is that it was in the collection before 1889.

Images

The Hunterian GLAHM E.457/3. Colour photograph of a Tahitian breadfruit-bast fabric of the Pateatea type. The eight stripes in one half of the sample appear to have been achieved by folding the cloth and then dipping the folded edge into a dye bath – here in two alternating colours, yellow and brown. (Copyright The Hunterian, University of Glasgow)
The Hunterian GLAHM E.457/3. Tahitian breadfruit-bast fabric of the Pateatea type, decorated with eight coloured stripes in one half of the sample. (© The Hunterian, University of Glasgow)

The Hunterian GLAHM E.457/3. Colour photograph of the reverse of a Tahitian breadfruit-bast fabric of the Pateatea type, showing how the dye has penetrated through to the back. (Copyright The Hunterian, University of Glasgow)
The Hunterian GLAHM E.457/3. Reverse of the cloth, showing how the dye has penetrated through to the back. (© The Hunterian, University of Glasgow)

Details

Type

sample

Date

1769-1889

Decorated

yes

Dimensions

159cm (length) x 132cm (width) x 0.3mm (thickness)

Connections

Place

Society Islands

People

Institution

Second Hunterian Museum

Manufacture

Associated Materials

Artocarpus altilis; Morinda citrifolia (expressed root sap); Morinda citrifolia (expressed root sap reacted with coralline limestone)

Associated Techniques

bark removal; river-board cortex stripping; long retting bast soak; fermentation; initial beating – wooden anvil and square beater; spreading and homogenisation; fusing composition; linear beater marking; post-completion conditioning; immersion dyeing

Associated Fabric Types

pateatea

Art Technical Description

The yellow colourant was identified as turmeric using HPLC.

Version

Entry created on 28 August 2020