Billie Lythberg’s fascination with barkcloths, Pacific textiles made from beating the inner bark of trees such as the paper mulberry, stems from a very young age.
“My grandfather had a strong friendship with a man in Noumea, who had family connections to Uvea and Futuna Islands, and he gave us several barkcloths and also waist adornments.
“So, as a child, I had a beautiful piece on my bedroom wall. I didn’t understand much about barkcloths as a little girl, but they were intriguing to look at, and really tactile,” says the University of Auckland senior lecturer in the Faculty of Business and Economics.
Dr Lythberg’s interest in barkcloths has grown over time, and she has dedicated a large portion of her career to studying the Pacific textiles, particularly ngatu (Tongan barkcloths), and how they are made and mobilised.
Lythberg, who teaches organisation studies, investigated Tongan women’s technical and material innovation in barkcloth-making and its commodification over time for her PhD, after which she accepted a postdoctoral position at Cambridge University in the UK to explore 18th century collections.
She has since been awarded Marsden funding and has travelled the world with fellow academics and Tongan artist-investigators to learn more about the textiles, publishing findings in a number of journals along the way and preparing exhibitions for Tonga and Aotearoa. She is most excited by the publications and other outcomes co-produced by academics and artists together, which the Marsden funding made possible. Looking through artists’ eyes has been groundbreaking, says Lythberg.
Two special issues of an upcoming journal will feature some key findings from the collaborative research with Dr Phyllis Herda, Dr Melenaite Taumoefolau, Sopolemalama Filipe Tohi, Dagmar Vaikalafi Dyck and Hilary Scothorn.
“The articles will share the real high points of the research. We have published the whole way through, but we want to collate the really big discoveries,” she says.
And this month, Lythberg is speaking at Te Whare Toi o Heretaunga – Hastings Art Gallery.
The gallery’s current show is the latest exhibition from the Marsden project – ‘Amui ‘i Mu‘a – Ancient Futures, by leading Tongan artist-investigators Dagmar Vaikalafi Dyck and Sopolemalama Filipe Tohi.
Before creating the exhibition, which has previously shown in Nuku‘alofa and Auckland’s Pah Homestead, Dyck and Tohi, along with Lythberg and other artists and colleagues, visited and examined 18th and 19th century Tongan artefacts in museums and collections in Europe, the United Kingdom, North America, Asia and Oceania. In some instances, it was the first time these objects had been seen or touched by Tongans since they left Tonga. Lythberg brought academic enquiry to these interactions, unpicking the economic and political factors around the objects’ travels.
The three historic barkcloth examples on loan to the ‘Amui ‘i Mu‘a – Ancient Futures exhibition feature gramophones, bicycles, and the crown of the late Queen Elizabeth II, and Lythberg says they demonstrate the way that events and genealogical histories are commemorated in various Tongan textile koloa or valuables, including barkcloths.
Traditionally, the cloths are made by women, although the tuber-propagated plants are usually cultivated by men.
The inner bark of the paper mulberry tree, native to Taiwan and Southeast Asia, is beaten with a hardwood mallet on an anvil until its fibres spread to form supple sheets. The ringing of the mallets and anvils creates a soundscape ubiquitous in Tonga, says Lythberg.
Once the sheets are dry, women then decorate the cloths with vegetable dyes and geometric and figurative motifs resulting in beautiful and useful pieces, like those that once graced Lythberg’s childhood walls.
