A master Tongan tapa mat maker, Tui Emma Gillies, is concerned with the common trend of traditional Tongan tapa mat makers using plastic in making ngatu (Tongan tapa mat).
Gillies, is currently in Taiwan, teaching tapa making as part of a thirty-day residency organised by prestigious Taiwanese traditional art programme, Art Ripple Taitung.
She says the use of non-tapa material such as paper and plastic diminishes the durability of ngatu. It also tarnishes the reputation of tapa mats, as the paper/plastic sheets quickly degrade and fall apart.
“In Tonga, there is quite a big problem at the moment…people are taking an easier route of making the ngatu,” said Gillies.
“A plastic paper clothe is used as a second sheet…we need to keep it at two sheets of tapa, and not one being just tapa and the other being a plastic sheet,” she added.
“There’s a tapa mat in a Spanish museum that is 300 years old, and it’s survived that long because of the way it was made.”
Source: ABC Pacific
