Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 22, Number 12, 1 December 2005 — Sleeping beauties [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Sleeping beauties

By Sterling Kini Weng Publicatiūns Editor Starting in late December, the Honolulu Academy of Arts will present an exhibit on kapa moe, whieh are traditional Hawaiian blankets made from the pounded inner bark of the wauke tree, or paper mulberry. The exhibit will feature the

academy's collection of about a dozen kapa moe pieces, all of whieh date back to the 19th and early 20th centuries and were donated to the academy. Exhibit curator Sara Oka said that most of the blankets are quite large, about three feet longer than an average king size bed with about the same width. She added

that several of them have as many as five layers of kapa. Kapa makers usually decorate their blankets - in most cases just the top layer - with elaborate geometric patterns using ink made from various plants. With the amount of detail evident in the designs, and with the quality of the craftsmanship in the kapa

itself, eaeh blanket is a pieee of art in its own right. Oka said that the pieces in the exhibit will represent a wide array of designs, some traditional and others more contemporary. She noted that the flower motif pattern on one particular blanket almost resembles that of a Hawaiian quilt. S

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