Tatau is one of the many words meaning tattoo in the Samoan language.
The Samoan style is very ancient. However, despite this, it has hardly changed since its inception. The Samoans made every effort to protect their style from the influence of other cultures.
Samoan tattoos belong to the Polynesian tattoo category.
As with other types of Polynesian tattoos, Samoans depict events using symbols that represent a rather simplified outline of people, animals, natural phenomena, woven in a single and conceptual pattern.
The peculiarity of such tattoos is the absence of curls, as well as large areas painted black.
They differ markedly from other tribal tattoos and are a dense ribbon consisting of small geometric elements. The most common patterns are triangles.
In such tattoos, every detail, every stroke and pattern has huge importance – no line was drawn purely for aesthetics.
The Samoan tattoo is sacred to its bearer and is a chronicle of the life of the person: important events in his destiny, feats, achievements, sacrifices, and the main character traits – so the paintings in this style often occupy such a large area of skin.
The main places for applying such tattoos – back, chest, legs and forearms. While men in the Samoan archipelago prefer to «clog» as much as possible of the body area, women are limited to small patterns on the arms or thighs.
The most important Samoan tattoo for men is the pe’a – dense tattooing which completely covers the lower body from waist to knee. Malu is the equivalent tattoo for women, and covers the leg from the upper thigh to behind the knee, but is not as dense as the pe’a.
The Samoan tattoo artist is known as the Tafuga.
Choosing a Samoan tattoo, you need to approach the search for a master with special meticulousness. He must know anatomy well, understand where and what pattern will be organic, what size details will be appropriate.In the modern world, this style of tattoo is chosen by people with a strong character, prone to symbolism, non-trivial, original things.
