Displaying Maori Cloaks

There are eight Maori cloaks in the Cook-voyage collections held at the Pitt Rivers museum.  Five have been selected for the new display, and they form a visual balance to the Tahitian fau and the Mourner's costume at the other end of the case.  Many of the cloaks have only been displayed flat in the past, but inspired by the photos in 'Whatu Kakahu/Maori Cloaks', edited by Awhina Tamarapa and published by Te Papa Press in 2011, we wanted to display these taonga to more represent the way they were worn.

The five cloaks mounted in the display mock-up

Torso-shaped mounts were made from inert Plastazote foam and low-formaldehyde MDF, and covered in polyester wadding and conservation-grade fabric.  Velcro strips were sewn to calico, and then attached to the back of each cloak using a herringbone stitch, passing between fibre bundles.  The corresponding part of the velcro strip was sewn to the mount, and in this way the cloak could be held in place. 

Cloaks mock-up with tissue paper during the mounting process.  The torso-shaped mounts can be seen underneath

The cloaks selected for display include 1886.1.1124, a rain cape, and 1886.1.1134, a cape made from fibres from the cabbage tree (ti kouka, Cordyline australis) which has the remains of feathers still attached.  Also chosen is 1886.1.1132, a cloak made from New Zealand flax and collected on the second voyage. It incorporates a red woollen thread which must have been obtained from a first voyage wool textile.

A thread of red wool incorporated into the cloak

A Red Woollen Thread

This cloak is thought to be Forster No. 103 'A dogskin coat'

1886.1.1132 Maori Cloak

It is made of muka, the prepared fibre of the New Zealand flax plant (Phormium tenax), twined in the whatu aho rua technique (double-pair weft-twining).

The 100th aho row, is in whatu aho patahi (single-pair weft-twining) - this is the only row made in this technique.

The cloak was worn as a paepaeroa, with the aho rows vertical. 

There are 7 whenu warps per cm with a 6-7mm spacing between each aho weft row. 

A single length of red woolen thread is woven into the kaupapa of the cloak.

Red wool thread woven into the cloak

The pattern formed is known as paheke, which means 'trickle' or 'flow'.   This strand of red wool must have been obtained by unravelling fabric or clothing obtained during the first voyage, and it is clearly woven in as the cloak was constructed, rather than being added afterwards.

Detail of paheke design

Because of the way that the red wool thread is woven into the cloak, with the 'tails' of the thread woven in after the main pattern,it is possible to tell that construction began at the edge furthest from the wool insertion.

Shaping rows, aho poka, are present.  There are two clear wedge inserts are present, one near the side furthest from the commencement  (1240mm from this edge) and one near the centre (790mm from the commencement edge).  A third set of aho poka are present which do not form a clear insert - these are approximately 40mm from the commencement.

Cloak showing the ends of the aho poka marked with paper triangles.  The right-hand edge was where weaving commenced.

The bottom of the cloak, the left hand edge as constructed, is finished with a twisted three-ply braid of dyed muka.  Each ply in turn is held by a successive aho row, so that each ply is attached to the cloak every third row. The muka used to make the cord is natural in colour, and also dyed black and brown, giving a variegated effect.

Cord of plied muka fibre used to edge cloak

The top of the cloak, the right hand side as constructed, is finished with a fine plaited border made of dyed muka.  In some areas the colours are mixed,  so that plies of black, brown and naturally coloured flax fibre produce a variegated effect to the plaited edge.

The plaited edge to the cloak, as well as the method of attachment of the dogskin tags

Tags of dog skin are attached to the upper corners of the cloak.  The dog skin strips are approximately 24cm in length, and are folded in half and tied to the cloak with a length of plied muka cord.  The cord is threaded through the body of the cloak, a single length being used to hold all the strips in place.

This finely made taonga (treasure), with its use of dogskin and precious red wool, was clearly a high status item of clothing.

The description of the cloak is based on information and descriptions found in Whatū Kākahu / Māori Cloaks, edited by Awhina Tamarapa. Wellington: Te Papa Press (2011)

"A Shaggy great coat"

This is Forster No. 107, decribed in the 'Catalogue of Curiosities' as 'A shaggy great coat.'

1886.1.1124 Front of cloak

1886.1.1124 Back

It is a rain cloak, with an outer 'thatch' of plant material, mainly New Zealand flax but possibly also including kiekie (Freycinetia arboria).  The thatch is incorporated into the body of the cloak as it is made, held within the whenu weft structure.  Folded strips of plant material form each bundle of thatch.

Folded lengths of plant material are incorporated into the whatu as the cloak is made

Work on the cloak would have started at the bottom, using relatively unprocessed bundles of harakeke, New Zealand flax, as the aho warps.  The cloak is woven in the single pair weft twining technique (whatu aho patahi).  At the neck edge, the finishing point for the construction, the warp threads and additional plant material are made into a thick plaited edge.

Braided edge at top of cloak

Sometimes, garments such as this these are called 'rough' or 'coarse'.  Yet, as Mick Pendergrast writes in "Maori Fibre Techniques - Ka tahi hei tama tu tama (Auckland, Reed Books, 2005) this designation is 'unfair to the garments and their makers...the workmanship and design is often exquisite.'

'Three plain coats of the flax plant'

As discussed in a previous blog post, the Cook-voyage collections at the Pitt Rivers contain many Maori taonga or treasures.  I have been examining some of the textile taonga, in particular a kakahu (cloak) collected by the Forsters, 1886.1.1133.  Number 106 in the 'Catalogue of Curiosities given to Oxford' it is described as one of 'Three plain coats of the flax plant, two with dogskin at the corners'

The first step in being able to describe how a kakahu is made involves developing the correct vocabulary.  I've been following the terms used in the excellent book 'Whatu Kakahu/Maori Cloaks' edited by Awhina Tamarapa and published by Te Papa Press in 2011, as well as many other references to help me to describe the way that kakahu were made.

The term 'weaving' to describe the process of making a kakahu can be misleading.  They were made by weft-twining, a process in which two 'weft' threads (aho) are twisted around each other, enclosing 'warp' threads (whenu) as they twist.  No loom is involved, and the process is done entirely by hand.

Forster 106, 1886.1.1133.  The white triangles indicate the ends of the short weft rows, poka, used to shape the cloak

Forster 106 is a small kaitaka (a cloak with a fine undecorated foundation, edged with a border, normally of taniko, a decorative weft-twining technique developed only by the Maori.)  The kaitaka is of muka, the fibres extracted from the New Zealand flax plant (Phormium sp.)  The aho is made up of single pairs of threads (single-pair weft-twining - whatu aho patai).  There are shaping rows inserted into the weft.  These short rows - poka - allowed the cloak to hang gracefully over the body.

The foundation of the cloak, showing single-pair weft-twining (the horizontal fibres).  The end of one of the shaping rows is also visible.

The cloak is very finely made.  There are eight whenu warps per centimeter, and the spacing between the aho warps is only three or four millimeters. The cloak is is excellent condition, even after 250 years, and the flax fibre is still soft and lustrous.

The plain part of the border on this kaitaka is not taniko, but very closely packed rows of single-pair twining, creating a thick, dense fabric.  However, the patterned areas at the top and bottom of the border do appear to have been created using taniko techniques, where two colours are used in the twining process, with the colour not in use being hidden inside the wrapped threads.

The border of the cloak, showing the patterned edge, and the plaited finish.  A short fringe of whenu warp fibres also is visible.

Small tags of dog skin are attached to the cloak along both edges of the border.  A cord made from twisted muka has been threaded through the body of the cloak and looped around the strips to hold them - this possibly would have required the use of a needle, which would probably have been made of bird bone.

Dog skin tag, showing the method of attachment.

A fine cloak such as this would have been a prized garment, imbued with the mana of both its creator and its wearer.  Kaitaka were garments of prestige, worn to stress the importance of an event.

I am not an expert in Maori fibre techniques, but I hope that by documenting these taonga and sharing that information on the new Cook-Voyage collections website, people with more knowledge might be able to contribute to our understanding of these important cloaks.

Maori taonga

This blog post is written by Tracey Wedge, one of the conservators here at the Pitt Rivers.  Originally from New Zealand, Tracey trained as a textile conservator, and has recently carried out a re-storage project of the Maori cloak collection held by the museum.

'Last week we had a visiting researcher examine a number of Māori textile taonga, or treasures, in the Cook-voyage collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum.  Formerly based in the Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, Dr Patricia Te Arapo Wallace is a Teaching Research Fellow at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, a Research Associate of Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand, as well as being an Affiliated Researcher of the Artefacts of Encounter project. She was accompanied by Alice Christophe who is undertaking a two-month intern placement at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, as part of the project.

Dr Wallace is particularly interested in Māori dress.  She was examining objects in our collection with reference to drawings made of Māori during the Cook voyages and an earlier Abel Tasman voyage.

Examining tatua 1886.21.2

The visit began with an examination of a number of our tatua or belts.  These belts were part of the collection of Joseph Banks who was the naturalist on Captain Cook’s Endeavour voyage of 1768 to 1771.  The tatua 1886.21.2 has an extremely finely woven central panel that would have wrapped around the waist and would be fastened using the elaborately plaited cords at either end. Dr Wallace pointed out a detail from an image in Abel Tasman's 1642 Journal in which similar belts were depicted by Tasman's artist Isaac Gilsemans in the 17th  century; they can also be seen in Sydney Parkinson's 18th century drawing of warriors aboard a waka (canoe).

Detail of a 1642 drawing from Tasman's journal showing warriors wearing belts or tatua

Dr Wallace is also interested in early examples of Māori sewing.  The tatua 1886.21.2 has been stitched using strips of hide while the kahu waero, or dog hair tassel cloak, 1886.21.19 that she has previously examined, has decorative elements stitched to the surface with thread extracted from harakeke (Phormium tenax - New Zealand flax).  The kahu waero is also from the Joseph Banks’ collection.  It has a finely woven kaupapa, or body of the cloak, that was once covered with clusters of awe, which are tassels made from the tail hair of prized white kurī, the Polynesian dog brought to New Zealand by Maori.  Dr Wallace was keen to explore how these clusters were attached to the garment.  The examination was enhanced with the use of a DinoLite™ a USB microscope from our conservation lab.  This enables close examination of areas of particular interest, which can be digitally photographed.

Examination of the kurī hair tassels attached to 1886.21.19

The DinoLite™ showed clearly the varied techniques used to bind the kurī hair into tassels, an interesting observation which suggests that the clusters of awe were probably made by more than one person.

Detail of 1886.21.19 showing twisting and binding of kurī hair

Detail of 1886.21.19 showing the stitching thread securing the tassels on the front surface piercing the kaupapa of the kahu waero on the inside of the garment.

On this occasion Dr Wallace could only spend one day looking at these pieces - not long enough - but we hope she will be back soon.

Each researcher that examines these taonga brings their personal perspective and knowledge, which adds to the understanding of the object.  In Dr Wallace’s case she is exploring the wearing and technology of these early textiles.  Her research feeds into, and is supported by, the Māori weaving community as the technology itself is a taonga and these early artefacts show techniques not practiced by modern day weavers.

These objects have yet to be examined by Jeremy as part of his investigations into the Cook-Voyage collections at the Pitt Rivers.  I am looking forward to what findings he will add, enriching further these precious taonga that can speak to us though their materials.'