A world-class and historic collection of barkcloth from the Pacific Ocean is highlighted in a new exhibition opening at the University of Glasgow’s Hunterian Museum on August 29.

Barkcloth: Revealing Pacific Craft showcases some of The Hunterian’s outstanding and decorative examples of tapa and reveals the fascinating process of how it is made. The exhibition runs for three months.

A video with the sights and sounds of Tongan women making barkcloth will draw people into the exhibition, says Professor Frances Lennard.

The exhibition features cloths from Fiji, Hawaii and Samoa, some of which are newly restored and on display for the first time. Also on show are items from the voyages of Captain Cook and the world’s earliest example of barkcloth from the small island-nation of Niue, donated to The Hunterian by the Presbyterian missionary Reverend George Turner.

Barkcloth: Revealing Pacific Craft is the result of a major three-year research project, Situating Pacific Barkcloth in Time and Place, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Based at the University of Glasgow’s Centre for Textile Conservation and Technical Art History, the project connected The Hunterian collection with those of research partners at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the National Museum of Natural History, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

“Little was known about The Hunterian tapa collection prior to the project,” says Prof. Lennard, the barkcloth project’s principal investigator. “But the research, which combined methods of material science, conservation, anthropology and art history, has clarified the provenance of most of the pieces and has revealed new scientific findings about the production, trading and use of barkcloth.”

Visitors will learn about the processes of making and decorating barkcloth and its uses, as well as the different plants used in its production and how they have been identified. They will also discover how the artefacts came into The Hunterian collection and the conservation challenges they posed.

Some of the historic barkcloths are fragile. Research conservator Misa Tamura is treating the barkcloth in both the Hunterian and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, collections to make the pieces accessible for study and is also carrying out research into appropriate treatments for cloths made of different fibres and in varying states of degradation.

The University of Glasgow has a Textile Conservation Centre and since 1995 textile conservation students have treated barkcloth [2], and compared the effects of intervention methods.

Barkcloth: Revealing Pacific Craft [3] is at the Hunterian Museum, University of Glasgow, from 29 August – 29 November 2019. Admission is free.