A nostalgic trip down memory lane.

Today, here in the North of Scotland it is, as you might expect, bitterly cold and the wind is howling down the chimney. Time for a bit of a nostalgic wallow, somewhere warmer.

I received this Leica 3b from my parents for my 21st birthday. The camera was made in 1939 and has a lens from 1935. I hasten to add that it was far from new when I received it - my teeth are getting longer, but are not yet that long! It is the most finely crafted camera that I have ever owned and by far the best looking.

The photograph was taken with the camera, in Fiji, back in 1970, using, I think, Ektachrome film. The Fijian marama is painting a design onto tapa cloth using a stencil cut from a banana leaf. Tapa is a cloth made from the bark of the paper-mulberry tree islands on the islands of the South Pacific, particularly Tonga, Samoa and Fiji where it is usually called masi.

In former times the cloth was used for clothing, but now cotton and other textiles have replaced it although tapa is still often worn on formal occasions such as weddings. Tapa is also widely used as decorative wall hangings and room dividers. One of my previous blips shows how tapa was used for clothing.