Overview
In the early 1800s, missionary wives taught European sewing skills to women in the Cook Islands. Tīvaevae (quilts) are a product of their collaboration.
In pre-European times, Cook Islands people made cloth from the bark of aute (paper mulberry trees) or hibiscus trees. As Christianity became more popular in the mid 1800s, so did the fibre of that religion – cotton. Since then, Cook Islanders have woven tīvaevae into the very fabric of their culture, using it in weddings, birthdays, and hair-cutting ceremonies.
The hundreds of diamonds in this comparatively abstract tīvaevae have been hand-sewn together within the white border.