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Kapa
by Betty Fullard-Leo
 
A host of tools for making
kapa include bamboo dye sticks, pounders, and red
alaea for coloring. |
Kapa making is an art that once spanned the Pacific,
but it reached perfection in Polynesia. The artistic
beauty of the 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."
In old Hawai'i, kapa was used in nearly every aspect
of life. It swaddled newborns and was fashioned into
malo for the men and pa'u skirts for women, as well
as kihei (capes) worn by both. Several layers of kapa
stitched together made kapa moe, sleeping blankets,
while small plain strips might be wrapped around an
individual's arms and legs for decoration, and orange
strips of kapa were used to adorn the hair. Kapa played
a part in religious practices, as well. Tall towers
called 'anu'u, which stood atop heiau and were thought
to house the gods when they communicated with the kahuna,
were draped with sheets of white kapa. Idols were also
decorated with kapa to show that the gods lived inside
the wooden figures.
When Reverend William Ellis described women of Kailua-Kona
making kapa, he
Printing kapa which takes
place at various cultural festivals around the Big
island of Hawaii. |
wrote in his "Narrative of a Tour Through Hawai'i"
published in 1826, "The fabrication of it shows
both invention and industry; and whether we consider
its different textures, its varied and regular patterns,
its beautiful colours, so admirably preserved by means
of the varnish, we are at once convinced that the people
who manufacture it are neither deficient in taste, nor
incapable of receiving the improvements of civilized
society."
One of those "improvements of civilized society"
was the introduction of woven cloth, which became so
available that kapa-making disappeared within a century
after Cook sailed through the islands. It wasn't until
the 1970s, that a resurgence of interest and pride in
the Hawaiian culture caused artisans like the Big Island's
Kanae Keawe and Puanani Van Dorpe to research the old
techniques and attempt to revive the art. Keawe says,
"I was self-taught. There were no kupuna living
who could tell us the correct way to make kapa, so I
did a lot of research at Bishop Museum. I read Peter
Buck's books and others on Hawaiian arts and crafts,
studied Fijian kapa making at Polynesian Cultural Center.
I'm a woodcarver originally, so I was able to recreate
the tools."
It quickly became apparent to Keawe and Van Dorpe that
the process of making kapa is long and arduous. In old
Hawai'i, Reverend Ellis described the cultivation of
wauti (mulberry) trees neatly planted two feet apart
and allowed to grow perhaps two years before the sticks
were harvested for their bark. Mamaki and other types
of bark were used as well, but wauti was most popular.
Ellis wrote about the process, "...we perceived
Keoua, the governor's wife, and her female attendants
with about forty other women, under the pleasant shade
of a beautiful clump of cordia or kou trees, employed
in stripping the bark from bundles of wauti sticks,
for the purpose of making cloth with it. The sticks
were generally from six to ten feet long, and about
an inch in diameter at the thickest end. They first
cut the bark the whole length of the stick with a sharp
serrated shell, and having carefully peeled it off,
rolled it into small coils, the inner bark being outside.
In this state it is left some time, to make it flat
and smooth." After several days, the strips of
bark were unrolled, laid flat, and the outer bark was
scraped off with a large shell. The remaining inner
bark was rolled up again and soaked in sea water for
a week to soften it and remove any resin. In the first
of two beating stages, the softened strips were laid
across a stone anvil and beaten with a round beater
(hohoa) turning them into long thin strips called mo'omo'o.
Next came bleaching in the sun and another soaking to
soften the mo'omo'o for the second stage of beating
on a wooden anvil (kua kuku) with a square beater (ie
kuku). The thin mo'omo'o were overlapped and beaten
together to obtain the size desired without any visible
seams.
Various kapa beaters
were used in the different stages of preparing kapa
for printing. |
Kapa beaters were four-sided affairs, with the coarsest
grooves on one side used first in breaking down the
bast, or wet bark. The beating continued using two sides
with finer grooves, until finally, finishing touches
were accomplished with the remaining smooth side of
the beater. Before the kapa was laid out to dry in the
sun, a kapa maker might emboss her bark cloth with her
own special design which would show through on the finished
product much like a watermark on fine paper.
Nineteenth-century historian Samuel Kamakau estimated
a woman could make one or two lengths of kapa a day,
which was bleached in the sun, then exposed to the night
dew and bleached repeatedly to give the cloth a sheen
that was reasonably moisture resistant.
Fine kapa was dyed with a variety of patterns according
to the maker's whim and creative talent. Ellis described
a pa'u cloth as: "generally four yards long and
about a yard wide, very thick, beautifully painted with
brilliant red, yellow, black colours, and covered over
with a fine gum and resinous varnish, which not only
preserves the colours, but renders the cloth impervious
and durable."
Red dyes were made from the bark of the noni and kolea
trees and the leaves of kou and amaumau. Yellow came
from the roots of the olena and noni and the bark and
roots of holei. Berries-akala (a variety of raspberry)
and ukiuki-yielded pink and pale blue. Lavender and
purple were obtained from sea urchin ink, while green
came from the leaves of mao. Red and yellow ochers from
minerals pulverized with a mortar and pestle were mixed
with kukui oil for another lasting dye.
Sometimes kapa was scented with coconut oil cooked
with stems and leaves of fragrant laua'e fern, or simply
transferred to the cloth by placing aromatic maile vine
or sandalwood bark between the sheets.
In addition to painting kapa freehand with a hala brush
dipped in dye, the artisans, reported Ellis, "cut
the pattern they intend to stamp on their cloth on the
inner side of a narrow piece of bamboo, spread their
cloth before them on a board, and having their colours
properly mixed in a calabash by their side, dip the
point of the bamboo, which they hold in their right
hand, into the paint and strike it against the edge
of the calabash, place it on the right or left side
of the cloth, and press it down with the fingers of
the left hand. The pattern is continued until the cloth
is marked quite across, when it is moved on the board,
and the same repeated till it is finished." The
finished product was so treasured it might be given
as a gift to an ali'i or saved for a bride's dowry.
By the mid 1970s, Kanae Keawe had learned enough to
pass the techniques of kapa making on through demonstrations
and workshops sponsored by the Honolulu Academy of Arts,
Temari Center for Asian and Pacific Arts, and various
Hawaiian civic clubs. Students of his, like Happy Tamanaha,
a Honolulu art teacher, have passed the knowledge to
others. However, Keawe estimates it might take 500 hours
to produce a piece of kapa large enough to cover a bed;
the cost of such a piece would be prohibitive.
Another skilled kapa artisan now living on the Big
Island, Puanani Van Dorpe has made wall hangings for
the Sheraton Maui Hotel (which was remodeled last year),
as well as a 16-foot pa'u that is displayed at the Hilton
Hawaiian Village Tapa Tower on O'ahu. More than 20 years
ago, Van Dorpe grew familiar with Fijian kapa when she
lived in Fiji for a time. Back in Hawai'i, while volunteering
at the Bishop Museum, she was astounded 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.
She acquired a collection of 18th and 19th-Century museum-quality
kapa which she inspected through a microscope, then
worked to duplicate the exact fiber patterns in her
20th-Century recreations. "I realized I had to
have help," says Van Dorpe, "so I began to
rely on my 'aumakuas. Two sisters are the goddesses
of kapa-Lauhuki and La'ahana. One is for beating, the
other for the decorating process." Van Dorpe has
also passed on her knowledge on to her daughter, as
well as through workshops with Keawe at Temari Center.
Besides Van Dorpe's modern pieces at the Sheraton Maui,
which symbolically represent events in Maui history
on 3-foot by 7-foot panels, 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 that measure 6 1/2 by 7 1/2 feet, originally
used as bedding about 1850, while a very rare kapa robe
was worn by an early missionary in 1823. The tools-seashells
for scraping bark, an anvil, kapa beaters, bamboo dyeing
sticks, and 'alaea (red earth for dyeing) to create
kapa can be viewed in the resort's Cultural Learning
Center. Other items are on display in the Lyman Mission
House and Museum in Hilo. Bishop Museum and a few British
museums have the finest samples. Today, kapa, which
was used to swaddle the ali'i of old at birth, as well
as to wrap them for their journey after death, is a
rare and treasured artifact, but it is no longer a lost
art.
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Story
appeared originally in Coffee Times print magazine and
appears online for archival purposes only. Any use or
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