Antoni Judit: Tapa, a fakéreg művészete. Válogatás Ignácz Ferenc gyűjteményéből. (Távoli világok emberközelben I. Gödöllői Városi Múzeum, 2006)

as raw material of clothes that they wore during funerals. The Tongan is the only group of peoples among those of the Pacific islands which inserts also historical events into their tapa motifs, in addition to abstract patterns or to the ones taken from nature. In Hawaii, the raw material and the technique of preparation of tapa ("kapa") are very similar to those practised in Tahiti that we described earlier. On the basis of the exhibits shown in the museum, it can be stated by right, that the most finely and the most beautifully decorated clothes, perhaps in all Oceania, were manufacured in Hawaii. Unfortunately, they lost this knowledge by the end of the 19th century, as a consequence of their early acquaintance with the Europeans. After a hundred year's pause, the Hawaii women revived tapa making by copying the know-how from their Tongan, Samoan and Fiji mates, by studying the specimens kept in museums, and by experimenting the age-old methods. The next station is Fiji. Here, tapa ("masi" by its local name) is made, nearly without exception, from the paper mulberry tree. Although the traditional wear - masi vulavula has always been white, the one decorated with patterns was also known, nay they applied the most variegated ornamental technique in Oceania. Masi is among the commodities most sought for by tourists in modern, industrialized tourism of our time, and it is not by chance that the greatest number of pieces come from here in the Polynesian collection of the museum. They used to cut the motifs for the white masi kesa with brown and black ornaments from the leaves of banana or of other plants with broader leaves, but today the X-ray film is used which is thicker and more resistant to hard wear. They put the leaf with cut patterns on top of the white cloth and they rub the pattern holes with paint. In my opinion, there has to be a preliminary phase preceding the painting method described above. Although I did not find any reference to it in any of the books dealing with tapa, and I have not been to Fiji either, however I think I succeeded in educing the existence of the preliminary phase related to this technique. The main point of it is that before drawing the desired pattern on the X-ray film, they prepare it from paper, in a manner well known from our childhood: we fold several times a square or a rectangular sheet of paper of the size required for the pattern, then we cut out with scissors small pieces at the edges at random, eventually semi-circles or indentures. By folding the paper out and by spreading it, patterns of flowers, stars or other figures similar to kaleidoscopic patterns will be obtained. Since it stroke my eyes when studying a few tapas from Fiji that the patterns occur repeatedly, that certain elements in the patterns are totally identical and also that some differences are likewise identical, I tried to prepare some motifs myself. The re suit of the experiment made it clear that preliminarily prepared paper patterns must have existed. It was the template prepared the above way that they used when drawing and cutting out the ornamental patterns on the film: The leaf is easily torn and broken up and the film is difficult to fold; probably this was the reason why paper introduced evidently by the European explorers was needed, and also the ingenuity of the local women. There is a special interesting feature of the handpainted patterns of masi kesa: in old times, it was easy to find out, by looking at them, where they were made and thereby what was the social position of the person who wore the garment decorated with the pattern. (Clunie, p. 126) The use of tapa then and now The following question has certainly arisen in everybody by now: what was the tapa used for ? The first and most evident answer is that clothes were prepared from it. But the situation is far from being as simple as that: the utilization of tapa used to be much more diversified than we would think and was full of delicate nuances. Tapa played the most important role in Polynesia. It was the faithful companion of an individual all through the person's life taking part in everyday life, and in the holydays, being present at every significant public or religious event. The new born babies have been wrapped in it, it was used as bedsheet on which the newly married couple "sealed their contract with blood" and they buried the bloody piece of tapa under the sanctuary. The winding sheet was made equally of tapa. For each occasion, a tapa of different execution, with different decoration had to be used moreover, this was further modified and nuanced by the different degrees in social rank. Big rolls of tapa cloth lined up in the houses as symbols of wealth changed owner when given in present or when used as measure of value. The rolls have been offered for important guests or exposed for public inspection as the proof of possessions when a marriage was contracted or the god statues have been wrapped in them. The newly prepared rolls of tapa were stored, everywhere in Polynesia, at the chiefs' houses wound up in big reels: many of them being longer than