CategoriesCultural and Religious Styles
Art of Tonga
The arts of the Polynesian kingdom of Tonga: decorated barkcloth, fine mats, carved clubs, ivory figures and royal stone monuments.
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About
Tonga, a Polynesian kingdom of about 170 islands, was settled by Lapita potters nearly three thousand years ago, and its arts grew around rank, gift exchange and ceremony. The most visible is ngatu, a barkcloth beaten from paper mulberry, pasted into sheets that can run for many metres, rubbed over patterned boards and painted in browns and black. Women also plait fine pandanus mats; the oldest named mats are heirlooms, and mats wrapped at the waist, ta'ovala, are still worn on formal occasions.
Men's arts included hardwood clubs covered in dense incised zigzags, sometimes with tiny human and animal figures, which European voyagers collected from the 1770s. Carvers also made rare female figures in whale ivory. Stone monuments survive too: the terraced royal tombs, or langi, near Mu'a, and the great trilithon Ha'amonga 'a Maui, raised around 1200. Lashing with coconut-fibre cord, called lalava, has inspired contemporary sculptors such as Filipe Tohi.
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