Probably Maori. Purchased at Christie's, London in the 1980s. 40 ½” x 59”, made of pounded mulberry bark and decorated with vegetable dyes in patterns of curvilinear shape within rectangles in the style specific to Maori art. Stored folded with faint creases but bright and clean with fine surface. Tapa cloths were given as gifts and worn around the upper body on special occasions. The artistic patterns are often drawn from mythology with supernatural significance.
