Polynesian Tapa Cloth

Abstract: Each culture in Polynesia traditionally created its own distinctive types of barkcloth with their own local names, but today, generally, these fabrics are referred to as tapa. For several thousand years, until the introduction of woven fabrics after European contact in the late eighteenth century, tapa played a variety of practical, social, and economic roles throughout Polynesia, where it could serve as clothing, furnishings, sacral objects, and a medium of ceremonial and commercial exchange. This article offers an overview of the Polynesian tapa cloth collection in The Textile Museum Collection. While the museum’s collection of tapa from this region is not widely known or studied, it comprises a number of noteworthy examples and traces the timeline of contact between Polynesian and Western peoples—including explorers, whalers, missionaries, the military, and contemporary collectors—as well as stylistic changes in tapa design over time.