Tiny Tifaifai

More tiny Tifaifai
I am in a celebratory mood- I have submitted my exegesis for my masters- so that's it! Three years of part-time reading and making over- and now I can go back to doing what i want though there is a piece of hellfire lace lurking in the cobwebs. I spent today cutting out some small tifaifai's. I call them tifaifai because the designs are created in the manner that the Southern Pacific Polynesian people create their tifaifai- though I make my own designs. There are very strong copyright traditions amongst the Ploynesian people relating to Tifaifai- and designs are passed on within families. Last week I was looking at a book Material World:Matisse, His Art and His Textiles ( seriously yummy book and I can't wait for the exhibition which opens on 5 March at the Royal Academy of Arts at Piccadilly, London) and am constantly surprised that very few authors ever make reference to Matisse's exposure to tifaifai during his sojourn in Tahiti. His hostess gave him one whilst he was there and subsequently he requested that she send him another when he had returned to France and there is a photo of a tifaifai hanging in his studio ( this information comes from the Queensland Art Gallery publication of 1995 entitled Matisse)- to me the cut out shapes he used in later life show some influence of the very organic shapes and cut our technique of tifaifai.