Chapter 3 - 5

05 Art History

The art of Hawaiian Kapa

In early Polynesia, weaving from animal hair did not exist, nor were there any fiber sources such as cotton, hemp, flax, or silk that could be used for material.

However, Hawaiians in the eighteenth century developed a process for making material, called kapa, from the bark of trees.

This multi-purpose fabric was water-resistant, soft, warm, and washable.

Kapa was used to make clothing for men and women, blankets for newborns, capes, and household goods such as bedding.

Orange strips of kapa were used by women as hair accessories and were also-wrapped around arms and legs for adornment.

The material was used in religious practices as well.

Tall towers that were thought to be dwellings of the gods were covered in kapa, and wooden idols would be draped with kapa to indicate a god’s presence inside the statue.

It could be used for burial shrouds, kite tails, bandages, balls for games, and even something as simple as lamp wicks.

Kapa making was a long process requiring diligence that began with cultivating trees.

Though kapa could be made using various trees, the most preferred kind was wauke, a paper mulberry tree that yielded the best quality material.

The wauke trees had thick, rough leaves and branches that grew profusely from a slim, stalk-like trunk.

The side branches would be cut off in order to produce straight wauke trunks without branch holes marring the bark.

The trees would be harvested anywhere from nine months to two years after planting.

The trunk stalks were gathered so that the process of stripping off the bark could begin.

Using serrated shells, the bark was out the entire length of the stall and carefully peeled off.

It was then rolled into small coils, with the inner side of the bark facing outward.

These coils were left for several days so the bark surface would turn flat and smooth.

The strips were unrolled, stretched flat, and the outer layer of bark was scraped off.

The inner bark was rolled up again and soaked in sea water for another several days to make it soft and to remove any resin from the fibers.

The next step involved beating the strips to form the kapa material.

The softened strips were placed across a stone anvil and pounded with a round mallet called a hohoa, which turned them into longer strips.

The strips were left out in the sun to bleach before being wrapped in tea leaves and placed in a covered pot of water to soak again for two weeks.

This would soften them up for a second round of beating, this time on a wooden anvil.

The instrument used for this stage in the process was a square mallet called a kuku, and each of the mallet’s four sides had a different texture.

The side with the coarsest grooves was used first to break down the wet bark.

Then two other sides with finer grooves were used to further mash the bark, and the final stage of beating was done using the fourth smooth side of the mallet to bond the fibers together into the desired width of the kapa.

To give the material a personal touch, a kapa maker might mark the cloth with her own special design that would show through the fabric, much like a watermark on a piece of high-quality paper.

Finished kapa material was always white from the strips of bark being bleached in the sun.

However, kapa makers had many sources of dye that could be used to color the fabric.

By using leaves, roots, berries, and bark, a variety of shades of red, yellow, green, blue, pink, and purple could be produced to make the kapa colorful.

Free-hand designs could be brushed onto the fabric to lend additional decoration.

There was also a stamping process using bamboo that had at design cut into the inner side of the stalk.

Dipped in dye, this stamp was repeatedly placed on the cloth, allowing kapa makers to produce their own artistic creation.

Coconut oil, scented fern leaves, and sandalwood were used to lend pleasing scents to the material as a finishing touch.

The arrival of Europeans in the late 1700s introduced woven cloth; and the art form of kapa making died out.

However, there has been a recent resurgence in making kapa material.

Hawaiian artists are taking interest and pride in their past culture, and kapa is once again being made today using the same process as was used centuries ago.