The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 18, 2025

Dark-brown wood tapa, a decorated bark cloth, beater with a rectangular prism upper half narrowing into a handle in the cone-shaped lower half. The sides of the rectangular prism, two shown here, are densely patterned. On one side, vertically extending lines frame a zig-zag pattern between them. On the other, the side alternates between rectangular bands of a carved grid, diamond shapes hallowed out within the grid, and columns of zig-zags.

Tapa Cloth Beater (l'e kuku)

before 1930

Polynesia, Hawaii, 20th century

wood
Overall: 38.7 cm (15 1/4 in.)
Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Thomas Munro 1971.152
Location: Not on view

Description

To make tapa, a decorated bark cloth, Hawaiian women used the four-sided beater to pound the inner bark of the paper mulberry tree, softened by a week of soaking in sea water. The cloth was beaten in several stages, starting with the most coarsely grooved side of the mallet and gradually reaching the finest grooved side. Although many Polynesian groups produced tapa cloth, only Hawaiian tapa cloth beaters were incised with a variety of "watermark" patterns. The prepared cloth was decorated with overlaying, cord snapping, free-hand painting, and printing techniques.
  • Year in Review: 1971. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 28, 1971-February 6, 1972).
  • {{cite web|title=Tapa Cloth Beater (l'e kuku)|url=false|author=|year=before 1930|access-date=18 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1971.152