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Large piece of white kapa, or Hawaiian barkcloth. Embossed throughout with small circles and very lightly tinted with charcoal. The texture of the kapa is thin but crisp. Most likely a layer of a kapa moe, or mutli-layered sleeping cover. Tapa (or kapa in Hawaii) is cloth made from the inner bark of certain trees (usually paper mulberry) and widely used throughout the Pacific Islands for clothing and sleeping material as well as for other secular, sacred and ceremonial uses.
tapa (bark cloth)
tapa (bark cloth)
"2.50" (in blue pen or ink)
Original To Stephen Phillips House (Salem, Mass.),
Unknown
Pacific Island Group
38 1/2 x 50 (HxW) (inches)
Gift of the Stephen Phillips Memorial Charitable Trust for Historic Preservation
2006.44.3672
full digital copy on Google Play: https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=IKgxAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&authuser=0&hl=en
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