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Samoan Material Culture
Transitional Garments
Transitional Garments
Garments occur which contain elements from different types. They may be important as indicating the natural progression in technique that took place as craftswomen sought to evolve better types of garment as a means of expressing social distinctions.
A kilt (L. 1571) in the Bishop Museum collection, with the two-cord commencement and plaited with a twilled two-stroke for a width of 3 feet 6 inches and a depth of 10 inches, is made to resemble garment kilts by the addition of braided tails and by soaking in 'o'a dye. (See figure 159.)
Another kilt (Pl. XXIX, B) shows the bottom left-hand corner commencement and body fringes characteristic of garment kilts but the body wefts at each upper corner are plaited into braids for tying around the waist.
A third kilt (Bishop Museum collection, B, 599), made of lau'ie pandanus strips, follows the textile kilt technique of providing tags on the outer surface and the fine mat technique in the left lower corner, lower and side edges. The treatment of the upper edge is unique in that from a plain plaiting edge, the dextral wefts are plaited at the back into a three-ply braid running from left to right and continued beyond the right edge to form a free braid tail to be used as a tying cord. The sinistral wefts are braided from right to left page 275and the projecting tail provides the left waist cord. Feathers are plaited into the sinistral braid by adding the quills to the braid plies.
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Figure 159.—Kilt, transitional type:
The wefts are 3 to one inch. The material is fau bast, which is attached to two suspensory cords (1, and 2) in the manner described with the twilled kilts. The suspensory cords are carried on at the ends into three-ply braids for tying around the waist. It is thus a true kilt from the attachment of the strips and the fact that the plaiting commenced from the suspensory cords. The ends of the strips are however, continued down from the plaited lower edge in three-ply braided tails as in the textile kilts. This is in itself of little significance, but braided tails have been added to the upper border of the kilt (3). Owing to the true kilt commencement, there are no free weft ends to supply the material. The tails are thus formed by passing fresh strips of bast around the supporting cords of the upper edge and plaiting it into braids (4). The braids are plaited for 1.5 inches and then end in a free tuft 6 inches long. Sixty-two such tails were added to the upper border and hang down over the front as a fringe.