This textile of the Cotsen Textile Traces Study Collection (T-3167) was first acquired in the eighteenth century by Julius Scammon Rodman, a sailor, collector, explorer and author of The Kahuna Sorcerers of Hawaii, Past and Present.[i] It is one of several tapa cloths in the Cotsen Textile Traces Study Center at The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum. Along with telling a compelling story of nature and productive creativity, this piece also communicates information about domestic and ceremonial uses of tapa in Hawai’i, such as the importance of tapa cloth in lifecycle rituals, clothing, and furniture.[ii] Moreover, because many tapa cloths in European and American museum collections were obtained during major ethnographic and exploratory collecting initiatives of the 18th and 19th centuries, the fragment also reflects the legacy of colonial contact and museum collecting.
The term tapa derives from the Hawaiian word kapa, pronounced “tapa,” meaning “the beaten.”[iii] Most tapa cloth is made using the inner bark of Broussonetia papyrifera, paper mulberry trees (also called wauke in Hawaiian).[iv] As an artistic textile product, tapa cloth illustrates elaborate community-centered creativity and collaboration between makers and producers. Tapa is produced through extensive processes that often involve the entire community.[v] Traditionally, men harvested the bark of wauke by stripping the outer layer of bark and then soaking the inner, softer bark in water. Women then pounded the inner pulp with elaborately carved wooden beaters, resulting in the thready, woven appearance of the Costen textile. Also called i’e kuku, wooden beaters are four-sided bats carved and incised with unique geometric designs. The markings on the wooden beater allow the tapa maker to leave her own unique imprint on both sides of the tapa cloths she makes. [vi] The diamond design on this textile, visible in a close-up view, serves as the creator’s unique watermark. However, little else is known about the Costen textile’s creator.
After the maker has beaten the wauke pulp into uniform sheets, vegetable dyes are applied to the flattened surface to create elaborate patterns specific to the source community. In Hawai’i, where the Cotsen textile was produced, plants were often dipped into dyes and then pressed onto the cloth to create an intricate pattern along the surface. A closer look reveals a pattern of dots and flecks of pale orange pigment, which may indicate the use of ground turmeric or Morinda citrifolia in its coloration. The faded color may also indicate the use of a much deeper brown dye.
The next step in tapa production would be to sew multiple strips of bark together using arrowroot to make a longer and more durable piece of tapa for different functional purposes. The Costen textile could have served a variety of purposes. Tapa was used to make clothing, such as headdresses, turbans, loincloths, girdles, skirts, and ponchos. Below, see an example of a mourner’s costume collected by Cook on his journey to the island of Tahiti, the off-white sections made of tapa. Owing to its thick, rigid structure, tapa was also used to make furniture and fixtures, such as bedcovers, wall dividers, and mosquito curtains.
Because this tapa originates from Hawai’i, the Cotsen fragment and its traditional gendered production are interwoven with the origin myth of Hawaiian bark cloth. According to legend, Ma’ikoha, the guardian of the wauke plant, instructed his two daughters, Laukuhi and La’ahana, to bury him by the side of a stream after his death. He told them that the plant that would spring forth from his grave could be used for clothing. Following this myth, Ma’ikoha is considered the guardian deity for men who grow wauke on the Hawaiian Islands. His two daughters are the guardians of the women who beat the tapa into its finalized form prior to dyeing.[vii]
Given its vital role in Hawaiian mythology, tapa cloths are often employed in ceremonial contexts. It is common for individuals to be surrounded by tapa at critical transitions in their life, especially at birth, marriage, and death. For example, tapa was historically used for wrapping skulls after death and for masks.[viii] Similarly, tapa was often used in ceremonies overseen by priests, served as clothing for carved statues of gods, or used during rituals where a spirit would inhabit a person or object wrapped in the cloth.[ix] In Hawai’i, tapa cloth acts as a conduit for spiritual power. When worn or used in ritual, tapa could increase the power of the presiding priest and could magnify a spirit’s entry into the person or object that the priest hopes to animate. In Hawai’i, tapa cloth still plays a key role in rituals surrounding four main gods, Kanaloa, Kane, Ku, and Lono.[x]
In the eighteenth century, when this tapa cloth was likely produced, European traders often collected tapa cloth and tapa production tools during their voyages to the Pacific Islands as part of the colonial collecting initiatives. These initiatives, often funded by a research institute, museum or private donor, aimed to collect examples of Pacific Islander material culture. This material culture was then displayed in a home, often in a cabinet of curiosities or in an ethnographic museum setting, to show examples of different textile production methods. These objects were utilized in exhibitions and placed in contexts that deliberately reinforced imperial relationships between collecting and source communities, often contrasting European and Pacific production methods. While the original collector of the Cotsen fragment, Julius Rodman, was not a European explorer himself, his studies of Hawaiian religion exoticized Hawaiian ceremony, religion and tradition along the same lines as European explorers.
John Charlot from the University of Hawai’i remarked that Rodman “seems less interested in social context and historical development than in producing what he admires in another book,” namely, a fascination with the dark nature of Hawaiian religion.[xi] Given the many sacred and ritual uses of tapa, Rodman may have collected this tapa cloth during his studies of Hawaiian religion. No evidence, however, remains of when or how it was collected or what use it served prior to its collection, likely because of his limited scope of research, as Charlot indicates in his writing. Like many European explorers, Rodman contributed several collections from his exploring trips to the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawai’i.
Whether or not this tapa cloth lived in the Bishop Museum collection, it passed through many hands before ending its journey at The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum. From Rodman, it passed to John Meigs, a shirt designer in San Patricio, New Mexico, and later to Bonhams, an auction house in New York. Items created from tapa cloth are still in great demand by museums.
After the initial collecting push in the eighteenth century, more tapa cloths and tools were collected in the late 19th century and early 20th century as part of ethnographic exhibitions, gifts and museum purchases. The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, another university-based institution like The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum focused on creating a study collection for students, contains a vast array of 275 bark cloths and tapa.[xii] The collection of tapa cloths through ethnographic expeditions or exploratory work, such as Rodman’s, substantially impacted tapa cloth production in Hawai’i and the Pacific Islands.
With the introduction of other textile materials, such as cotton, through western contact, tapa cloth production largely dwindled. To this day, most tapa cloth sold in Hawai’i is not actually produced on the islands.[xiii] Rather, the tapa is shipped in from other Pacific Islands, such as Fiji, where it is easier to make the cloth. This reliance on outside-sourced tapa hastened the loss of knowledge surrounding the creation of tapa in Hawai’i, which persists to this day but is primarily confined to ritual and religious use. Therefore, the Cotsen textile represents a snippet of Hawaiian history and the long-term legacy of tapa cloth in museums today.
Notes
[i] Rodman, Julius. “The Kahuna Sorcerers of Hawaii, Past and Present: With a Glossary of Ancient Religious Terms, and the Books of the Hawaiian Royal Dead.” Exposition Press, 1979.
[ii] Bonhams. “African, Oceanic, and Pre-Columbian Art.” Bonhams, sale 19412, 9 November 2011 in New York.
[iii] Pacific Islands Tapa Cloth, exhibition. RISD Museum, Providence, RI, July 17-October 18, 1992.
[iv] Embedded Nature: Tapa Cloths from the Pacific Islands, online exhibition. Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
[v] Hermkens, Anna-Karina. Engendering objects: Dynamics of barkcloth and gender among the Maisin of Papua New Guinea. Sidestone Press, 2013.
[vi] “Wauke.” Canoe Plants of Ancient Hawai’i. Accessed October 3, 2021.
[vii] Kamakau, S. Tales and Traditions of the People of Old: Namoolelo a ka Po’e Kahiko. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 1991.
[viii] Leonard, Anne, and John Terrell. Patterns of Paradise. Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History, 1980.
[ix] Wintle, Claire. Colonial collecting and display: encounters with material culture from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Vol. 4. Berghahn Books, 2013.
[x] Buck, Peter H. Arts and Crafts of Hawai’i. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 1957.
[xi] Charlot, John. “The Kahuna Sorcerers of Hawaii, Past and Present, With a Glossary of Ancient Religious Terms and the Books of the Hawaiian Royal Dead.” The Journal of the Polynesian Society (1981): 296-299.
[xii] Holdcraft, T. Rose. “Research, Exhibition and Preservation of the Barkcloth Collections from the Pacific in the Harvard-Peabody Museum,” in Barkcloth: Aspects of Preparation, Use, Deterioration, Conservation and Display, Margot M. Wright, ed. London: Archetype Publications Ltd, 2001.
[xiii] Bunnell, Donald A. “Connections between Pacific Islands people who have used tapa (kapa) in ritual.” University of Hawai’i. PhD diss., 2004.