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Source

National Museum of Natural History

NOTES

FROM CARD: "INVENTORIED 1975."

Originally catalogued as just Polynesian, but it has been stored/attributed as Hawaiian.

Material of the object comes from the inner bark of the paper mulberry (broussonetia papyrifera). After the inner bark was removed from the plant, and left to soak in water, it would have been beaten by a wooden mallet on an anvil, to become a sheet of kapa. Each of the five sheets has different beater marks which suggests that each sheet was beaten with a different patterned beater. The top sheet has a beater pattern of asymmetrical diamonds, each with a circle in the middle. The second sheet has beater patterns with alternating wavy and straight horizontal lines, with vertical lines as a backdrop. The third sheet has alternating horizontal and vertical lines. The beater marks of the fourth sheet also has alternating horizontal and vertical lines, however they are much more defined on the fourth sheet. The same pattern appears on the fifth sheet, however it has a faded appearance and is difficult to see. The sheets are also dyed different colors. The first sheet is a maroon-reddish color, the second sheet is plain, the third sheet is a greyish-black and the fourth and fifth sheets are plain. The sheets also appear to have been cut along the vertical edges, as they are crisp, however the horizontal edges do not have the same crispness and appear more worn-like. These five sheets were then sewn together with a twinned piece of kapa, twisted in the 's' direction. The second sheet was folded along the top edge of the first sheet and the fourth and fifth sheets were folded in the opposite direction along the sewn edge. This may have been to give the sewn edge more strength, by being bulked out by the folded edges. Adrienne Kaeppler, Curator for Oceania Ethnology, has verified the tapa is from Hawaii. The first sheet appears to have yellow stains. These resemble the same yellow stains on a Samoan tapa (E13732), which in July 2013 was identified by Community Scholar and American Samoan tapa artist Regina Meredith as the decayed remnants of the outer bark of the paper mulberry plant. Several long black hairs were also found within the sheets of the tapa. These may have been hairs from the maker or one of the users of the tapa. However, aside from storage creases the fibers of the tapa are in good condition and very strong, which suggests that this tapa may have never been used.

RECORD LAST MODIFIED

10 Apr 2019

SPECIMEN COUNT

1

Keywords

Anthropology Ethnology