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

angle during a "period of relative pause", then they went on with their discovery trips towards East Polynesia, and also northbound and southwestbound. Their colonizing expeditions reached several times to a few island groups: one of their end stations was New Zealand between 750 and 1200 A.D. - Maori tradition still keeps alive the memory of this event. The ancestors of Polynesians were primarily horticulturalists and offshore fishermen as far back as in their South-East Asian original homeland. They preserved the basic features of their lifestyle up to the present day. They developed their skills in navigation and in ship building to perfection during their cruises at sea. Their tool-making techniques were on a neolithic level until the appearance of Europeans, they used stones, shells, the bones of sea and land animals for the preparation of their instruments and articles of personal use, no metals were known to them. Although they were experienced potters, they gave up the manufacturing of ceramics in the territory of Polynesia approximately 1500 years ago - perhaps because there was no need for it. Their expansion meant a series of well prepared expeditions: subsequent to scout travels, the future colonists took everything with them they thought they would need in their new environment: their domestic animals and grown crops. In the new, generally uninhabited island, they established their original lifestyle, gradually adapting themselves to local circumstances. The fact that there are a lot of variants within the relative cultural unity of the archipelago is the result of separated development. The advanced state of social development of the Polynesians, their properly arranged villages, the beauty and appropriateness of their buildings arouse general surprise among the first European travellers, and most often won their admiration. The know-how of tapa manufacturing was, among others, something the Austronesian peoples inherited from South-East Asia. The mulberry tree or paper mulberry tree, the most important raw material the tapa is made of, is equally of Asian origin; and as suggested by its name, it is related to paper making. The earliest kind of paper worked out experimentally in China in the second century A.D. was produced chiefly of the fibres of this plant by using also additionally other vegetal fibres (hemp), textile waste and fishnet. The manufacturing technique itself was similar, and since not only the material but also the method is identical in every significant point, tapa making with its more than 5000 year old traditions in South China and in the continental regions of Sout-East Asia can rightly be considered as the forerunner of paper production. Bark and inner bark The outer, visible tree-bark (cortex) is known to everybody. The cortex is characteristic of a tree species. Similarly to the skin of animals, it protects the tree against outer, mainly natural impacts, and if it gets hurt, it will sooner or later cicatrize. The innermost part of the tree trunk, the duramen, consists mainly of dead cells encircled by the alburn, which is the living, raw tree: the cells of this layer deliver water and minerals absorbed from the soil upwards, to the leaves. The cortex of the tree, just like the skin, is divided to two parts: the outer, visible one consists of lifeless, dead cells. The inner one, the phloem or leptom (liber in Latin) is built up of constantly proliferating, living cells. They deliver, from the leaves downward to the roots, the nutrients (sugars, starch, cellulose, albumin) the plant processes in the leaves with the help of solar energy. The phloem is in reality the zone where growth takes place in the tree- trunk: the cells generated by it will become later reeds which die out, lignify and transform to create the outer hard bark. Beside miscellaneous substances in smaller quantities, the tree contains 40 - 80% of cellulose and 20 - 30% of lignin. Cellulose is a sparingly soluble substance. The groups of cellulose molecules are arranged in a grid-like structure, this is why its cell walls are resistant and flexible. The best paper is produced of plants with fibres rich in cellulose, and this is also the basis of tapa making. By the way, it is not by accident that bast and book are designated by the same word "liber" in Latin - whereas the word 'paper' goes back to the name of the papyrus sedge (Cyperus papyrus) which was used by the Egyptians for purposes and with a technique similar to the use of bast. The raw materials of tapa All the three species used for tapa making belong to the family of mulberry trees (Moraceae). Captain Cook, who saw these plants and saw tapa, in 1769, during his first trip calling also at Tahiti, was a witness observing things with keen eyes and describing them in a witty style. In his diary, he wrote about the Tahitians that they use three different kinds of bast material, which