Bag

A flat rectangular bag (kete muka) made from New Zealand flax, in dark brown, yellow and undyed fibre forming vertical stripes, and running threads along the wefts. There is a wide gold and undyed fringe around three sides on the back and front, and two twisted fibre handles with tassels at the ends. This bag was made by finger-weaving or twining and the main technique is single-pair twining, which forms the wefts (aho). This began at the top edge with a selvedge, and finished at the bottom where the warp threads (whenu) were left loose, and are covered by the fringes. There are five warps per cm, and the wefts are 14 mm apart. The fringe threads are joined by a line of single-pair twining and sewn onto the bottom and side edges. There is one fringe on the back of the bag and one on the front. There are running threads twined into the weft at every sixth warp, some in dark brown thread (single), giving an 's' shape, some in gold (double), giving a flattened 'o' shape. There are alternating double rows of these on front and back.