Papua New Guinean Tapa Cloth Dance Skirt, Framed

Bark, beaten flat and worn for dancing, now behaves itself under glass.

This tapa cloth dance skirt, framed, comes from the Musa River in Papua New Guinea, made of pounded bark and pigment. Tapa is cloth beaten from inner bark, and in Papua New Guinea women have worn painted lengths of it for dances and ceremonies, with designs often said to belong to a family or clan. Four crossed medallions run down the center in rust brown on cream, framed by side columns of angular hooked forms. Edges are finished in fine zigzags. Eighty-six inches on its long side, thirty-seven on its short.

It has gone from the dance floor to the wall, and has not lost the beat.