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Samoan Material Culture

Kava drinking cups

Kava drinking cups

The drinking cups (ipu'ava) are made of the muli end of the coconut cut transversely. The transverse direction is specified because the nut may be cut longitudinally or obliquely as was done by the Hawaiians. Through the projecting muli, a transverse hole is bored through which a loop of sennit braid is usually attached. The cups vary in size, not only from the size of the nut used, but from the segment cut off. Regarding the mata and muli ends as the poles, the smaller nuts are usually cut off on the mata side of the greatest circumference thus forming a small but deep cup. With large nuts, the division is made on the greatest circumference or even below it, thus form-page 151ing a wide but comparatively shallow cup. The cups are usually scraped smooth on the outer surface. In course of time, they become coated with a pale, bluish patina derived from constant dipping in the kava. This adds materially to their value. When no longer in active use the patina fades to a yellowish color, and may even flake off in parts. The inside of kava bowls also becomes coated with this patina, but as with the cups in Museum specimens, the color fades and the material flakes off.

In some kava cups the outer surface is not polished but left in the rough, natural state except for a depth of 1 to 1.5 inches from the circumference of the rim. Such a cup was that owned by the late Le Oso Ripley of Leone. It was named Tao-nei and was quite famous. It was never used at ordinary drinking at night, but only on ceremonial occasions. If a chief expressed a desire to use the cup, a pig had to be killed to provide the necessary accompaniment to appropriate ceremonial. This gave rise to the name of the cup, Tan-ini (cook now).

Some cups, from the polishing both inside and outside were very thin. An ordinary half shell from a drinking nut is used in the kava naming ceremony (See Plate VIII B, 4.)