Bag

A flat rectangular bag (kete muka) made from New Zealand flax fibre, with gold, purple and undyed thread decoration. There is a wide fringe around three sides on the back and front, and two twisted fibre handles in gold, purple and undyed fibre. This bag was made by finger-weaving or twining and the main techniques are single and double-pair twining (top two rows), 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 four warps per cm, and the wefts are 15 mm apart. The fringe warps 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. The wefts are gold and purple thread. Every seventh or eighth warp is gold-coloured thread, and pairs of these cross over between wefts to form a cross-diagonal pattern. There are three double rows of this decoration on the front and back of the bag.