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Caption

  • A mounted Tahitian Mourner's Costume made of shells, feathers and material. The mask is rimmed with slender bird feathers.
  • Back of a mounted Tahitian Mourner's Costume made of shells, feathers and material.

Tahitian mourner's costume

About 18th century

Pearl shells; coconut fibre; feathers (frigate bird); turtleshell

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Description

Tahitian chiefs were considered powerful individuals imbued with great spiritual power called mana. To mourn their death, a senior relative would lead a grand procession. They would dress in an elaborate mourner's costume (heva tupapa’u).

Lots of different materials make up this costume, including wood and pearl shell. Remarkably, it was crafted without any iron, making the intricate pearl rectangles even more impressive.

Francis Godolphin Bond acquired this Tahitian mourner's costume in 1792, during Captain Bligh’s second breadfruit voyage. Bond donated this costume to the Devon and Exeter Institution in 1815. It was presented to the Albert Memorial Museum in 1872.

You can learn more about the Tahitian mourner’s costume on RAMM’s collections site.

Visual description: The Tahitian mourner’s costume is displayed on a full-size mannequin. It has a headdress made of frigatebird feathers, resembling a lion’s mane. The headdress adorns a mask with large stylised pearl face details. The rest of the costume is decorated in large pearl shells, which form an arc along the shoulders of the costume.

RAMM Treasures Trail - Object 5 - Tahitian Mourner's Costume

Learn about the fifth object in RAMM's Treasures of the Museum trail, the Tahitian mourner's costume.

Treasures of the Museum: Tahitian Mourner's Costume

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Transcript

Morwena Stephens: I'm Morwena Stephens, a textiles and world cultures conservator.

One of my favourite objects at RAMM is the Tahitian chief mourner's costume, a spectacular costume made in Tahiti to mourn aristocratic or high-status individuals. I love it because it's spectacular to look at and imposing, and also because it deals with death and mourning, something a universal experience.

I was very fortunate to be able to conserve this costume when I first came to RAMM to work with the World Cultures collections. It's a very involved costume made out of lots of material.

Not only does it look spectacular, but when you understand the work that went into it to make this object: you know, cutting the wood without the use of iron and cutting, even more spectacularly, cutting the pearl shell into tiny rectangles. I think it's a remarkable object.

One of the things I thought about for the wearer of the costume is that, really, it's not an easy thing to move in because you have this quite rigid pearl shell and turtleshell mask that raises really far above the head, and then the wooden breastplate. So, I imagine that it feels quite cumbersome to be wearing.

Every time I walk through the museum, I like to check on some of my favourite objects, including the Tahitian chief mourner's costume. Partly it's a sort of technical thing, checking on its condition and how it's mounted and if it looks as I would like it to look. But another thing is really the excitement of other people being engaged by it and drawn to it and curious about it because I think it's such a fascinating object.

Credits

Watch RAMM staff and volunteers tell us why they love each of the 16 objects, and hear the fascinating stories that make these items so special.

Additional Information

Dimensions
910 x 890 mm
Accession Number
E1776

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