Conclusions

Please, allow me to speak my mind. I am not an expert, so I don't know how useful this project was. But it was different. It was interesting. And it was meaningful. Probably this was the most entertaining project in all my years studying this degree. And I'm not sucking up to anyone, allowing someone to do something different when everybody asks you to do the same, is good. And it feels good.

So now I'm still not an expert on Tā Moko and Maori tattoos, but I know more. And I hope anyone having a look on this blog will know a little bit more after it. That is the point on education and research: acquiring and sharing knowledge.

Books Used

Apart from all the webs linked here, these books were really useful and are the font for the scrapbook:

Tatouage Polynésien

Tatu-Tattoo

To find out more...

• Lars Krutak: Creator of "Tattoo Hunter"
• Youtube
• FB

• Sketches
• How to draw a Maori Tattoo
• The Art of Ta Moko; Tools and Process

Part III - Sketching a tattoo

This is my work piece based on this research about Maori tattoo.

And here it is how I made it:

Part II - Interview with a tattoo artist

Interview with Funi, tattoo artist from "ND Tattoo Barcelona"

“About the different kinds, it depends on the island, in every area they are different. – Yes, tribal symbology, mythology, everything is lookalike, except for Borneo, it is a little bit different. But the rest are mostly black blocks, lines and dots, triangles…”


“About the techniques, they mostly used sticks with shark teeth or tiny bones, with two sticks, they made a canal so the ink could lower to the sharp point. Then they would take the two sticks and start tapping tap-tap” (tā moko comes from this sound).


They explain how nowadays new machines and techniques are used. Modern day tattoo machines come basically from Edison’s designs; and there are some others, electrical machines working with magnetism.


“Yes they have meanings. It is said that you go there and you talk with a local, you explain him your life history and they summarize/picture it on a tattoo, every thing has a meaning. Turtles are like a long life, triangles are shark teeth, triangles with an inner line are earth/ground, everything is about nature, birds…”


“Here in Europe, it is about aesthetics. They could get angry if they see you with a Maori tattoo with no reason, because for them it has a value. They could get really angry”


“Maybe depending on what you wanted to get, they wouldn’t do it on you. Most of them are family matters.”


“Yes we do them, but on an ornamental level. Here in Barcelona there is a guy doing them, it is said that he can interpret them, but we are not sure.”


“A Maori tattoo is a kind of tattoo that I wouldn’t do on myself. I like to see them, but if I had to get one, I think I would go there, because of the meaning it has. Because here maybe you can get whatever. If you have it on an ornamental level yes, but it is cooler if it has some meaning. So get something that maybe I don’t know what it is and the guy doing it doesn’t either…”

Part I - Scrapbook

Parts of the body and its meanings

Every body part has a meaning and a purpose, here we can see how it was structured and divided:

A little bit of history

Here we have a piece of history, sharing how Captain Cook found New Zealand in October 1769 and saw for the first time a tattooed Maori warrior.

They had/have different meanings and designs both for 

Men

and

Women

John Rutherford was, in 1828, the first Englishman to show these tattoos back to England, after being held prisoner by the Maoris for more than 10 years.

Tā Moko were sacred, and here we can see how they were done and a representation of a warrior.

Real skin from a dead body to keep the art from the tattoo, placed on a body-shaped piece of wood.

This wish to keep the art on the skin was not only a thing related to Maori and Tā Moko, here we can see an ancient Peruvian mummy, kept to maintain the tattoos on her skin.

 

 Old statue representing tattoos

 Nowadays representations on males

Nowadays representations on females

Motifs and body parts

As previously said, there were different motifs and body parts were a Tā Moko could be placed, and each one had different meanings:

on women,

 on men,

 on the chest,

 on arms,

 on the bottom, 

or on legs or feet.

  

Maori people with tattoos

Many Maori dignataries were portrayed with their Tā Moko, by Charles Frederick Goldie (1870–1947)

A modern-day Maori fisherman

Guy Lemaire, a Belgian showman, with a Tā Moko representation on his face.

Tools

The main tools to perform a Tā Moko were horns or shark tooth, and two sticks. Just like that.

Modern-day techniques have changed from the ancient ones...

...were even needle combs were used.

 Stamps were used in other islands

And here is where the ink was prepared, mostly from resin and coal.

For any further information, please follow me on the next stop of my trip.

Intro

I will spare everyone the time about copy/pasting, paraphrasing or any other way of reproducing all the information from the Web about the Maori Tattoos, AKA Tā Moko. Here are the best sites to find any information suitable to the topic.

• Wikipedia Entry: Tā Moko
• 100% New Zealand
• Moko Ink

Still, let me point out some broad strokes: Tā Moko is not really what we nowadays call tattoos. These are punctured on the skin, while Tā Moko are carved on it. These pieces of body marking, originals from New Zealand's Maoris were a shock for the European invaders since the first view. In this piece of reasearch I'm about to try to find out some more about them, please join me in this trip.

This Research Project is structured in 3 different parts:

1. Scrapbook
2. Interview with a tattoo artist
3. Sketching a tattoo

Tā Moko

Tā moko - Maori Tattoos

Welcome to my research project for "Història i Cultura Postcolonials" about Tā moko - Maori Tattoos.