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Samoan Material Culture

Baskets for storing

Baskets for storing

Large baskets made of pandanus leaves, either fala or paongo, are said to have been made somewhat square or oblong and with a cover for use in storing kilts and skirts. They are called tanga but their manufacture had been forgotten according to my informants. The basket figured in Plate page 207XVI, D was made with double wefts of pandanus, as the bottom part shows. The sides have been covered by thin white and colored pandanus material split into narrow wefts to work decorative designs in twill. The decorative part is elaborated as a result of trade influence, as is also the small size of the baskets. The thick, coarse foundation wefts beneath the decoration follow the check plait shown on the bottom and at the rim. The wefts cross not obliquely but at right angles to the edges, as will also be seen later in the baby mats (tapito). It seems likely that the large, square or rectangular tanga baskets followed the technique of the model basket shown in Plate XVI, D, but without so much overlaid decoration. Turner (40, p. 275) figures a basket evidently of the tanga type with a cover and some oblique lines of decoration. The thick, double wefts in the models make a stiff basket that in a larger size would do excellently as a clothes basket for pieces of bark cloth.