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Overview
Fine mats of various kinds play an important part in the lives of Tongan people today, both in New Zealand and Tonga. No important event in the life of a family or community passes without ceremonial exchanges of mats and other goods.
Materials and decoration techniques
Wool has been used to provide colourful fringes on pandanus mats since the nineteenth century. However, the practice of embellishing the surface of mats with wool, and thereby increasing their value, seems to have become common in Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga only since the mid twentieth century. The Tongan version of this practice, called fala pati, is the most highly developed. Tongan women in New Zealand find it difficult to obtained sufficient raw material to weave the large mats for which Tonga is famous, but a large plain mat from Tonga can be transformed into a fala pati in New Zealand, as happened in this case.
Significance
Melika Uvea's mother, Fine Isitolo, made this mat at her home in Tonga in about 1997 and brought it to New Zealand as a gift on the occasion of her granddaughter's first Holy Communion in 1998. For the next two years, while at home with her pre-school children, Melika Uvea worked to create the fala pati. Her husband, Fa'apoi Uvea, helped her work out the design. This style of fala pati is seldom seen, because it is so time consuming to make.