Sample of beige tapa cloth from 1820
Klubbat för:
5500 SEK
Utropspris
5 000-6 000 SEK
Beskrivning
PAPER. FIJI. SPECIMEN OF ANTIQUE TAPA. Sample of beige tapa cloth, about 100x110 mm., in a beige cloth box with gilt morocco label to spine.
Pinned to the sample is an old handwritten note stating: "Came home in the Brig Java of Salem in 1820. Benjamin Downing. The Dress of the King of Feejee Islands. This article is the bark of a tree". In a new cloth box.
A traditional Polynesian craft, tapa cloth is made from the bark of the mulberry tree and often dyed with colours from roots, berries or leaves.
Different island groups had their own distinctive dyes and patterns. As well as being used for clothing, it featured in native ceremonies: newly weds were given gifts of it, offerings of the cloth were made in religious ceremonies, and it was also used as a medium of exchange.
Cook was interested in the cloth, mentioning it and its manufacture in all three of his accounts, and Webber depicts its various uses in his "Views in the South Seas". As they moved between islands, Cook's crew collected different specimens, not least to feed the burgeoning collector's market back home. This practise gave rise to one of the rarest of all works relating to the Pacific in the eightenth century, Shaw's "A Cataloguue of the different Specimens of Cloth collected in the three voyages of Captain Cook to the Southern Hemisphere", an 8-page work including 39 specimens of tapa.
From the library of Swedish antiquarian bookdealer Björn Löwendahl (1941-2013).
Photo.
Auktionsnummer:
6149
Datum:
2015-06-16