Making tapa cloth in Papua New Guinea.

Tapa cloth (or simply tapa) is a bark cloth made in the islands of the Pacific Ocean. Most commonly the bark of the paper mulberry or breadfruit tree is used.

The bark is stripped from young saplings, and the white inner layers are peeled off for the tapa. These narrow strips are soaked in water until softened; then they are pounded with grooved mallets, which spreads the bark into increasingly wider strips until they are about ten inches wide. The edges are then overlapped and glued with manioc root juice, breadfruit, or arrowroot starch to make wide sheets.

Then, on a long log, the tapa is stretched over a series of these design plates, and the tapa is rubbed with dye to stain the surface in areas where the design is raised. Finally, after the tapa has dried, dark outlines and details are hand painted, using crude brushes made from sticks with frayed ends. A variety of natural plant dyes are used. Natural brown dyes, for example, have been made from clay and tree sap.

Large, traditional tapa cloths are nearly always divided into rectangular compartments, then frequently subdivided with geometric patterns. Motifs are repeated in series.
In former times the cloth was primarily used for clothing, but now cotton and other textiles have replaced it.

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