Materials and TechniquesPolynesian Art

1ind-2Ana Alejandria

Rina CapatiRussel Dela PazKaroline Gabriel

Beatrice MacatanaySharmaine Urbano

Polynesia

Polynesian art is characteristically ornate, and often meant to contain supernatural power.

Magic too plays a considerable part in the ceremonial, often highly elaborate, which attends many of their everyday activities.

The art forms of such people are dependent upon the materials at hand and the tools they have evolved; and they are inextricably knit into the whole pattern of everyday life.

The Polynesians are a finely built brown people organized socially into the family and the clan with the chiefs, of an attributed divine birth, as rulers.

Their religion consist of spirit and ancestor worship, infused through and through, as is their social system, for the social and religious are hardly separable, with a highly developed system of taboo (tapu), which means “prohibited” for sacred or objectionable reasons.

Moai (Statues)

Moai are monolithic human figures carved from rock. Though moai are whole-body statues, they are commonly referred to as "Easter Island heads". The moai were either carved by a distinguished class of professional

carvers who were comparable in status to high-ranking members of other Polynesian craft guilds, or, alternatively, by members of each clan. The oral histories show that the Rano Raraku quarry was subdivided into different territories for each clan.

Completed statues were moved to ahu mostly on the coast, then erected, sometimes with red stone cylinders (pukao) on their heads. Moai must have been extremely expensive to craft and transport; not only would the actual carving of each statue require effort and resources, but the finished product was then hauled to its final location and erected.

The statues mediate between chiefs and gods, and between the natural and cosmic worlds.

Portrays ancestral chiefs. They stand on platform markings burials for religious ceremonies.

Characteristics of maoi Known for their large, broad noses

and strong chins, along with rectangle-shaped ears and deep eye slits, and have designs carved on their backs and posteriors.

Deep elliptical eye sockets were designed to hold coral eyes with either black obsidian or red scoria pupils. Some moai had pukao

topknots or headresses on their heads; these were carved out of red scoria.

Some of the moai were painted with maroon and white paint

These were carved from tuff (a compressed volcanic ash). At the end of carving, the builders would rub the statue with pumice.

Polynesian tattooing was the most intricate and skillful tattooing in the ancient world. This is the only form of Polynesian art that has been widely adopted and imitated by westerners.

Characterized by elaborate geometrical designs which were often renewed, and embellished throughout the life of the individual until they covered the entire body.

Tattoo

It was in Tonga and Samoa that the Polynesian tattoo developed into a highly refined art. Priests who had undergone a long period of training and who followed strictly prescribed rituals and taboos during the process executed the tattooing. For the Tongon, the tattoo carried profound social and cultural significance.

In ancient Samoa, tattooing played an important role in both religious ritual and warfare. The tattoo artist held a hereditary and highly privileged position.

Tools and TechniquesTraditional tattooing tools

consist of a comb with needles carved from bone or tortoise shell, fixed to a wooden handle. The needles are dipped into a pigment made from the soot of burnt candlenut mixed with water or oil. The needles are then placed on the skin and the handle is tapped with a second wooden stick, causing the comb to pierce the skin and insert the pigment.

The name tatau comes from the sound of this tapping.

Barkcloth or TapaIt was once a very important

textile product in tropical areas around the world.

Has a spiritual dimension in that it can confer sanctity upon an object wrapped in it.

Traditionally used to wrap the bodies of high-ranking deceased chiefs.

Also used for domestic purposes such as blankets, room dividers,floor mats, and decorations

Process of making tapaMade by stripping from

the bark from such trees as the paper mulberry that has been softened through a process of soaking and beating.

The inner bast is separated from the outer bark, soaked and beaten with wooded beaters on wooden anvils, stretched, dried, and combined into bigger pieces.

Ceramics Ancestral Polynesian ceramics

represent a continuing pottery tradition from the preceding Eastern Lapita Phase. The highly decorated ceramics of the Early Eastern Lapita cultural complex include a whole range of shouldered jars and a number of dish-like bowls not found in the later plain wares associated with Ancestral Polynesian culture.

Ceramic cooking vessels had rather great value for at least three reasons: it was possible to cook larger quantities of food in a pottery

vessel than in a bamboo tube It was possible also to mash the food with a wooden paddle the flavor was judged to be superior to that of the same kind of

vegetable boiled in a metal container, an artifact then beginning to replace pottery

Slip casting

Clay was one of the earliest materials used to produce ceramics. Ceramic materials are brittle, hard, strong in compression, weak in shearing and tension

Slip-casting methods provide superior surface quality, density and uniformity in casting high-purity ceramic raw materials over other ceramic casting techniques.

A slip is a suspension of fine raw materials powder in a liquid such as water or alcohol with small amounts of secondary materials such as dispersants, surfactants and binders.

Early slip casting techniques employed a plaster block or flask mould. The plaster mould draws water from the poured slip to compact and form the

casting at the mould surface. This forms a dense cast form removing deleterious air gaps and minimizing shrinkage in the final sintering process.

Petro glyphs (Rock Engravings)

Are pictogram and logogram images created by removing part of a rock surface by: incising, picking, carving, and abrading

Easter Island has one of the richest collections of petro glyphs in Polynesia. About 1,000 sites with more than 4,000 petroglyphs are catalogued.

It is the general category of rock art and Petro forms like patterns, andshapes

Probably have deep cultural and religious significance

Significance remains for their descendants.

Represent some kind of not-yet-fully understood symbolic or ritual language

Designs are mostly sea turtles, birdman cult, fish, gods .

Uses of Petroglyphs astronomical markersmaps forms of symbolic

communication form of "pre-writing"show trailssymbols communicating

time and distances traveled local terrain in the form of

rivers, landforms and other geographic features

to create totems to mark territory to memorialize a person or

event

End