How to make a Cook Islands quilt

TIM WATKIN talks to the author of a book which pieces together lw-4the story of the brilliant lw0art of tivaevae.

It is remarkable what beauty can be created through a bit of gossip.

The tivaevae, or traditional quilts, pieced together in the Cook Islands are often the product of gatherings where women from different villages stitch away while chatting about themselves and their families, and singing a few songs.

The art form is believed to have arrived in the Cooks some time during the 19th century - probably with London Missionary Society wives - and was easily tacked on to the island way of life. The art form has had little recognition in the decades since, but the launch by Random House this week of The Art of the Tivaevae, by Rarotonga-based author Lynnsay Rongokea, seeks to display its beauty to a wider audience.

Rongokea says quilting is taken seriously in the Cook Islands, much as carving is by Maori. It is almost universally done by women, but it is not denigrated as women's work.

Tivaevae are given as gifts to visiting dignitaries and the few women expert in designing, cutting and sewing are given the status of taunga - a person who is highly skilled in any art. But when a group of friends visited Rongokea in the 80s and couldn't find any books on the local art, she realised that making tivaevae was a hidden art.

"I take them for granted because I see them in family homes and watch my relatives making them, but when you actually look around you don't see them."

Tivaevae has lacked recognition because Cook Islands women have stayed true to tradition and largely kept their work in the family. "There are a few women who sell, but local women like these [in the book] spend all their lives sewing for their families and children, so they don't want to sell them. No amount of money, you know ... They've spent all this time sewing them and they want them to be passed on to their children's children."

You might think some women would seize the chance for profit by selling tivaevae to tourists wanting to take a little piece of the South Pacific home. "I can't see it," replies Rongokea. "These women are saying, 'Not for sale'. To get one you might just have to befriend them, then get married or leave."

She laughs, then laughs again at how even men in the Cooks complain they never get to see or sleep under the tivaevae. But the men aren't trusted. "When women make them, they normally put them away and maybe bring them out on special occasions. They might be laid on the bed once a year and hardly seen in a lifetime. They're very precious, they don't want them to get dirty or ruined."

That preciousness can be seen in the book's photographs by John Daley. The quilts are displayed in radiant colour, while the radiant faces of the quilters themselves are captured in contrasting black and white portraits.

Rongokea began the project in 1988 and conducted the interviews with the quilters over a couple of years. Each quilter offers her story, her skill, her favourite techniques and designs. There are four tivaevae styles: tivaevae taorei (patchwork), tivaevae manu (applique), tivaevae tataura (applique with embroidery) and tivaevae tuitui tataura (embroidered squares of fabric joined together with crocheting or lace borders).

Cotton is the fabric of choice and tivaevae take between one week and two years to complete, depending on time and complexity. While quilting in mod-con countries such as New Zealand has developed increasingly abstract styles, tivaevae design remains centred on nature.

"What you see with tivaevae reflects the environment we live in. That's why you'll find so many plants [used in their design]. We use plants for dance costumes, for traditional medicine," says Rongokea.

But there is debate as designs evolve, especially over those of the outer islands quilters who are more experimental with colour. Older women will often ask if the sewn plant doesn't look just as it does in their garden. "With the use of colour, some women will say, 'But leaves are not blue', 'This rose is not purple'. In the interviews, one taunga said, 'These outer islanders, when they sew they have no idea of colour. They might have a black rose or something'.

Rongokea says it was hard to draw out the women's stories of how they conceive and design a new quilt. They had never had to articulate the process before.

She mimics a typical response. "Oh, I don't know where I get my ideas from. I go out in the garden and that. Then I see the anthurium and I think, that'll make a nice tivaevae."

Rongokea reaches for the book and flicks through to find one photo. "I must tell you the story behind one design," she says, all smiles. She knows her way round the book well. This is its second edition after a "horrible" first print run with another publisher in 1991 - "something I want to forget", she says. This edition is literally a dream come true.

"It might sound crazy, but in my mind I could visualise it. I could smell it and touch it ... This is what I visualised."

She finds the page and holds it up. "What does it look like to you?"

On a burgundy background is a series of bright crowns. "Someone said to me that it would be to do with England, the motherland. But according to the women, they were saying, 'Do you know the crown design? We got that from the Rothmans [cigarette] packet'."

Several designs carry the stigma of superstition, the origins of which are lost in time. The peacock and any marine life are considered bad luck by many even today.

A few women now machine-sew tivaevae, but by far the majority still work with needle in hand. Sadly, their numbers are declining. This quilting - artistic and practical - was largely a fulltime job for Cook Island women in the past, combined as it was with cooking and socialising.

Now, as in most countries, many women work in paid employment and their time for interests such as stitching is limited. While women still come together to talk and sew and sing, it is now only during meetings organised by church or women's groups and typically once a month, rather than every week. Children, previously taught to sew in school, now follow more academic pursuits and young women are often too busy being young women of the 21st century to learn the old skills.

Rongokea sheepishly confesses that, while she sews, she too has never learnt to make tivaevae. So despite these women's efforts to preserve their quilts, time is wearing out tivaevae more effectively than their menfolk ever could.

"That was another reason to record it," says Rongokea. "I think it could become a dying art form. They will be quite rare. There's only a small percentage of women picking it up ... Women just don't have the time that they used to have in the old days."

But the book is more than a celebration of a fading art. It serves as a challenge to another generation.

Quilter Vereara Maeva, of Rarotonga, who features in the book, says "It will be a great loss to our culture if we don't wake up now and try to save this unique and priceless gift of wisdom from our grandmothers, our mothers and the Almighty."