How Bark Becomes Cloth

Paper mulberry trees are cultivated and stripped of their white inner bark, yielding the raw fibre that becomes the cloth.

Wooden mallets pound the bark on stone anvil slabs until it felts into a wide, unbroken sheet — thinner than fabric, stronger than paper.

Koka — soot from candlenut husks blended with mangrove bark — is rubbed across carved kupesi tablets to transfer the motifs.

Each new sheet is beaten and stitched to the last, extending the cloth to thirty metres for the most significant ceremonies.