Small kapa cloth fragment from Hawaii, yellow with one knot of plant fiber laced through one corner. Crinkled and embossed with tightly-spaced parallel lines. Likely part of a kapa moe, or multi-layered sleeping cover. Kapa (the Hawaiian word for tapa) is a cloth made from the inner bark of trees and is widely used in the Pacific for clothing and bedding, as well as other secular, sacred, and ceremonial uses.
tapa (bark cloth)
tapa (bark cloth)
Original To Stephen Phillips House (Salem, Mass.),
E11599
Unknown
Pacific Island Group
1 7/8 x 5 3/8 (HxW) (inches)
Gift of the Stephen Phillips Memorial Charitable Trust for Historic Preservation
2006.44.3646
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