White piece of Hawaiian kapa cloth. Irregular shape embossed with tightly spaced lines. Probably 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 secular, sacred, and ceremonial uses.
tapa (bark cloth)
tapa (bark cloth)
Original To Stephen Phillips House (Salem, Mass.),
E16865
Unknown
Pacific Island Group
13 3/4 (H) (inches)
Gift of the Stephen Phillips Memorial Charitable Trust for Historic Preservation
2006.44.3652
full digital reproduction available on Google Play https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=IKgxAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&authuser=0&hl=en
Historic New England is committed to implementing reparative language description for existing collections and creating respectful and inclusive language description for new collections. If you encounter language in Historic England's Collections Access Portal that is harmful or offensive, or you find materials that would benefit from a content warning, please contact [email protected].