MARO, KOMBOW, LAKE SENTANI TAPA BARK CLOTH PAINTINGS

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Tapa, or Bark Cloth, is a non woven fabric decorated with figurative and abstract designs usually applied by scratching or by painting. The basic cloth-like material, produced from the inner bark, or bast, of certain trees (bark fiber), is made by stripping off the bast, soaking it, and beating it to make the fibers interlace and to reduce thickness. The most popular material is the inner bark of the paper mulberry tree, although breadfruit and fig trees are also used. Hand-painted bark cloth is limited today primarily to northern Papua New Guinea, a remote lake of Irian Jaya & Sulawesi, Celebes, Indonesia.

Bark cloth is highly distinctive, and generally took the form of maro (skirts or loincloths). Some pieces feature seemingly abstract, highly dynamic interlocked curvilinear forms, and others hybrid fish-like or lizard-like creatures, often with human faces. Sentani bark pictures are usually only three colors, black, white and red. Black is made from charcoal, white from sea-shell, red from Sentani soil. Sometimes there are natural holes within the bark and the designs.

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All our collector and rare items come with pages and pages of research about provenance, and with history of the tribes and photos as well, depending on item and whenever possible. When shipping internationally, we group ship multiple purchases to save you money, and find the best rates available.