Fijian Masi (Barkcloth)
Barkcloth of Fiji, beaten by women from the inner bark of the paper mulberry into broad sheets, which are felted together on a wooden anvil and painted with geometric designs in black, brown and red. Masi is made in working parties for gifts, dress and ceremony: it wraps the body at weddings and funerals, lines the walls of the chiefly house, and the finest decorated pieces are given on occasions of state. The patterns are handed down within clans, whose history the cloth records, and the same barkcloth family is known across the Pacific — masi in Fiji, siapo in Samoa, ngatu in Tonga, kapa in