Rawhide Burlap Wall Hanging (Native American?)

Any thoughts on this piece? The seller doesn't know anything about it. The rawhide has a few cracks. I am thinking it looks Native American, like Acoma. Thanks, Joe

 

No, not Native American, not rawhide. This is a piece of tapa cloth, from the South Pacific. Tapa is made from the bark of the paper mulberry tree, which is stripped off in long strips, peeled, scraped, pounded thin and flat on a wooden anvil, and made into sheets of tapa cloth. The process is a lot more complicated than that, but that's the short version.

It is still made in Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa, and by a very few contemporary artists in Hawaii. Each island country has its own name for tapa, and a distinctive style and method of decoration which can determine where it was made.

This particular piece is from Samoa, where tapa is called siapo. Samoan siapo can be either painted freehand (siapo mamanu), or "printed" by rubbing over a pattern board and then highlighted by hand (siapo tasina). There are 10-13 basic design elements (each of which has a name, and is based on natural forms) used in Samoan siapo, which are combined to make unlimited patterns. This is siapo mamanu, and is a good example of the use of 4 of those design elements.