Fabric Type 26

hopū

Description

The finest grade of white Society Islands ‘ahu barkcloth, usually produced from a mixture of paper mulberry and breadfruit bast, but occasionally (in the very highest quality fabric) paper mulberry alone. It was heavily retted and fermented before beating, beaten out extremely thin, and marked with a linear beater mark of 10-14 grooves per cm. It was hopū fabric which constituted the principal form of storable wealth in the Society Islands, and vast bolts of it were sewn up in coarser tapa covers before being stored suspended in the rafters of chiefly homes.

References

  • Ellis, W. (1829, II). Polynesian researches: during a residence of nearly six years in the South Sea islands. 1st ed. 2 vols. London: Fisher & Jackson
  • Brigham, W.T. (1911). Ka hana kapa, the making of bark-cloth in Hawaii. Memoirs of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum of Polynesian Ethnology & Natural History, Vol. III. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press

Images

The Hunterian GLAHM E.457/6. Colour photo of a thin, papery-textured Tahitian hopū fabric with a fine linear beater mark of ten grooves per centimetre. This sample was formerly part of a larger fabric sample (sixteen feet six inches by ten feet six inches, along with its sibling-samples GLAHM E.594/4 and E.594/10). (Copyright The Hunterian, University of Glasgow. Photograph supplied by The Photographic Unit, The University of Glasgow)
The Hunterian GLAHM E.457/6. A thin, papery-textured Tahitian hopū fabric with a fine linear beater mark of ten grooves per centimetre. (© The Hunterian, University of Glasgow. Photograph supplied by The Photographic Unit, The University of Glasgow)

Version

Entry created on 28 August 2020