Cloak

A rectangular cloak (korowai) made from New Zealand Flax fibre with black tassels over the main part of the cloak and forming fringes on the neck and side edges. There are coloured wool fringes and running threads along the bottom edge. This garment was made by finger-weaving or twining without the use of a loom. The main technique is double-pair twining, which forms the wefts (aho). This began at the bottom edge and finished at the neck edge with the warps (whenu) folded over and fixed in place by paired threads every third warp. There are five warps per cm, and the wefts are 1 cm apart. There is a group of 10 extra wefts (aho poka) on each side at the shoulder to provide shaping. The tassels are black-dyed, rolled and two-ply. They are inserted sideways into the weft and form a single fringe along the neck edge and three rows of fringes along the sides. There is one black warp for about every 12 undyed ones on the neck edge. There are two wool fringes along the bottom edge, with alternate blocks of red and blue wool. The running threads have red, then blue, red and red wool twined into the wefts next to the wool fringes, passing through the weft at every fourth or fifth pair. Some black tassels have been lost where the back of the shoulders would have been, and many are fragile. Some staining.