polynesian tattoo, tattoo designs, meanings and their origin
Tattoopatterns
Handcraft
Origin of these patterns can often be found in other handcrafts of the
Marquesians, predominantly in textiles. For example winding and plaiting.
But there are also other inspirations like engravings.
An original element is a plain angle, which can create a lot of new patterns
during modification. One of these patterns is
niho peata,
what means sharkteeth, which was tattooed very often. The following row
shows its development.
These patterns are origin for new ornaments itfelves. If you put to rows of triangles together, you’ll get a new pattern called hiku-atu, what means bonitotail. This ornament can be modificated again in a lot of different ways.
Another
modification of angles is the pattern called
kofati.
Here the angles are connected alternately the other way round. Patterns like
this have their roots in textile plaitings. If you look at this ornament,
you’ll easily realise that it looks like a plaited mat.
The last pattern here is chess. The illustration you can see here was
tattooed all over a chief’s chest. It’s called umahoka. Uma is chest and
hoka cn be translated with warrior or brave. So umahoka is warriors’ chest.
Chesspatterns are origin for new ornaments, too. But sometimes these
patterns can’t be called chess anymore, because they look like dots or
hatchings.
A very nice ornament is a chessline in two rows (te vehine náu). This one
will be discussed more detailed in tattoo’s meanings.
We
can see that chesspatterns are precursors of the all black areas called
pepehipu. Later these chesspatterns were tattooed
less often and replaced with all black areas.
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