Hawaiian Kapa (Barkcloth)
Barkcloth of the Hawaiian islands, beaten by women from the inner bark of the wauke, the paper mulberry, on a stone anvil with grooved wooden beaters, and joined and felted into wide sheets. The cloth was printed by stamping with carved bamboo tubes and blocks and with leaves and water-stamped patterns, in colours drawn from earth, charcoal and plants, and the designs were named and passed down within families. Kapa served as clothing, bedding, bandages and swaddling, and in ritual it wrapped the dead and clothed the altars, so that the finest pieces carried the mana of the maker and the house