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Historical Background The beating of bark into a fine cloth is an ancient art in Hawaii, as in other parts of Polynesia. In fact, bark-cloth making was once practiced in communities covering nearly half the globe. The Hawaiian version of this beaten cloth, known as kapa, is made from the fibers of the wauke or paper mulberry tree (Broussonetia papyrifera). Hawaiian kapa is considered the finest in the Pacific, because of the quality of its workmanship, the number of tools and implements used in its production, and the variety of colors and designs used in its decoration. It tends to be softer and more elaborate than kapa (or tapa) found elsewhere. Hawaiian kapa is also distinctive in the use of handmade wooden mallets that serve to emboss or "watermark" a decorative pattern into the fabric. The artistic beauty of this cloth made of pounded bark impressed Captain James Cook in 1778. "One would suppose," he wrote in his journal, "that they [Hawaiians] had borrowed their patterns from some mercer's shop in which the most elegant productions of China and Europe are collected, besides [having] some patterns of their own... The regularity of the figures and stripes is truly surprising." Kapa cloth was once used in nearly every aspect of life in Hawaii. It swaddled newborns and was fashioned into malo for the men and pa’u skirts for women. Several layers of kapa might be stitched together to make kapa moe, sleeping blankets. Kapa also played a role in religious practices: it draped tall towers atop the heiau (temples), decorated idols, and was used for burial shrouds. With the introduction of woven cloth—and within a century after Captain Cook’s landing in the islands—the traditional art of kapa virtually disappeared. Kapa-making only began to be reintroduced into Hawaiian culture in the 1970s, with the resurgence of interest in native arts and traditions. A woman named Pua Kanemura is one of those credited for reviving the art of kapa in Hawaii. Her work, and the work of many others, has restored this important part of Hawaiian heritage to the people of Hawaii—and now, with the establishment of Kuku I Ka Pono—to California. Pua Kanemura first encountered women making kapa during a visit to Fiji in the 1970s. Fascinated by what she had seen, she began her lifelong study and practice of this difficult art. Another skilled kapa artisan now living on the Big Island, Puanani Van Dorpe also became familiar with kapa in Fiji, where she lived for a time. Upon returning to Hawaii, she began volunteering at the Bishop Museum, where she was astonished to see how much finer the tissue-thin Hawaiian kapa was. "The Fijians just beat their bark for two days and they have a sheet of kapa; there's no fermentation period," she explains. In order to better understand the Hawaiian kapa technology, Van Dorpe acquired a collection of 18th and 19th-century museum-quality kapa, which she examined closely through a microscope. She then worked to duplicate the fiber patterns in her 20th-century creations. "I realized I had to have help," says Van Dorpe, "so I began to rely on my 'aumakuas [ancestral spirits]. Two sisters are the goddesses of kapa—Lauhuki and La'ahana. One is for beating, the other for the decorating process." Van Dorpe, who has made kapa hangings for the Sheraton Maui Hotel and a 16-foot pa'u now displayed at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Tapa Tower on O'ahu, has also passed on her knowledge on to her daughter—and to others, through workshops with Keawe at Temari Center. Besides Van Dorpe's modern pieces at the Sheraton Maui, which represent events from Maui's history, beautiful kapa pieces can be viewed at Four Seasons Resort Hawai'i at Hualalai on the Big Island. Displayed near the ballroom are two kapa moe, used as bedding around 1850, and a very rare kapa robe, which was worn by an early missionary in 1823. The tools used to create kapa—seashells for scraping bark, an anvil, kapa beaters, bamboo dyeing sticks, and 'alaea (red earth for dyeing)—can be viewed in the resort's Cultural Learning Center. Other items are on display in the Lyman Mission House and Museum in Hilo, but Honolulu's Bishop Museum and a few British museums have the finest samples. Today, kapa, which was used to swaddle the ali'i (nobility) of old at birth, and to wrap them for their journey after death, is a rare and treasured artifact, but it is no longer a lost art. Making Kapa Traditionally, Hawaiian women made kapa with tools—mostly of wood or bamboo—that were fashioned for them by men. Skilled in the use of the adze and a few carving tools, Hawaiian men made the greatest number and variety of implements for pounding and decorating kapa used anywhere in the Pacific. Having no skilled men available to make tools for them, the members of Kuku I Ka Pono have each created their own personal sets of kapa tools, including the ho hoa (round beater), the I’e kuku (square beater), and the wooden anvil used for beating the final kapa into long sheets. The woods used in the making of these tools are typically hardwoods capable of standing up to alternating wet and dry conditions without cracking, and to the pounding that is endemic to the creation of kapa. In an effort to adapt the tradition to resources available in California, The Kapa Project has tried out cherry, apple, ash, white ash, kokobolo, mahogany, and kaiwe as possible tool materials. The finest kapa can take five hundred hours to make. It is an arduous process, involving numerous tools. To begin with, men would cut the wauke that furnished the fiber with an adze (ko’I), a stone blade lashed to a wooden handle, or a stone knife. The plants were cut close to the ground and the roots left to produce new shoots for the next year. A shark-tooth knife (niho-‘oki), clam or similar shell, adze blade or a thumbnail helped to split the bark the full length of the tree. The split bark was then removed from the stem in a single piece by peeling it with the thumb and fingers, and a shell (wa’u) or bone scraper was used to remove the outer brown and green layers (epidermis) from the strip after it had been unrolled. The scraping was done on a kapa log (kua kuku) or on an olona scraping board (la’au kahi olona), which typically measured 65-89 inches long and about 10 inches wide. Next, the material was beaten on a stone anvil (pohaku) with round beaters (ho hoa). Then it was soaked, after which it was beaten up to four times on a long, wooden anvil (kua kuku). This anvil, which could be up to two yards long, was quadrangular in cross-section with a longitudinal groove on the underside cut deep enough to reduce the weight of the implement. For finer-textured kapa, the cloth was beaten again with a four-sided wooden beater (i’e kuku) with longitudinal cuts that served to further break down the fibers. Once this process was completed, a personal pattern or watermark was beaten into the cloth, and it was set out to dry and bleach in the sun. |
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