Along the border of a classic-period Māori cloak runs a dense band of finger-twined muka — flax fibre worked by hand into a geometry of steps, triangles and diamonds. This is tāniko, one of the most technically demanding textile arts in the world, built stitch by stitch with no loom, only fingers counting threads. The palette is deliberately narrow: a near-black ground dyed in iron-rich paru mud, red-oxide accents, and a warm off-white pattern thread. The aramoana zigzag — "pathway of the sea" — jumps across the dark field in strict diagonals. Nothing curves. Nothing is cream. The dark weave is always the field, never the figure.