Majuro, April, 2013: Maria Fowler, daughter of the first President of the Marshall Islands Amata Kabua, and Dr. Irene Taafaki, Director the University of the South Pacific’s Majuro campus, joined forces in the mid-2000s to endeavor to bring back to life the art of weaving jaki-ed, the traditional Marshallese clothing mats worn up to the early part of the 1900s.

The jaki-ed revival program began on two levels: A request to all of the country’s weavers to supply jaki-ed for an exhibition and silent auction and the running of a weaving course at the National Vocational Institute led by expert weaver Patsy Hermon.

That first auction in 2007 was extremely successful and is now an annual tradition, with the quality of the mats being higher and finer with the passing of each year. During this early period of the program, Maria and Irene spent much time researching the historic mats held in the collections of museums around the world. These include collections in Hawaii’s Bishop Museum, the British Museum, the Linden Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, and many others.

Photographs of the museums’ historic jaki-ed were unearthed or taken and these were copied and provided to the small group of expert weavers, who fell upon them in delight at the insight they gave their skill.

While this research continued, in 2010, expert weaver from Ailinglaplap Atoll Terse Timothy confided in Irene that her eyesight was failing and that she felt the need to pass on her skills before it was too late. This exciting idea gave birth to the concept of holding a weaving apprenticeship at USP.

All involved in the jaki-ed revival program, including its patron Iroij Mike Kabua, agreed this was a wonderful idea and so USP found donor funding from the Australian Government’s AusAID program to build a weavers’ house’ in the back garden of the campus.

A selection process for the apprentices was conducted by USP’s Coordinator for Community and Continuing Education, Tamara Greenstone Alefaio, and in November, 2011, 10 young ladies began attending the daily classes. These were not just about weaving, but also about giving the apprentices basic skills in finance and running a business.

This first group of apprentices graduated in May, 2012, with President Christopher Loeak amongst the many VIPs to attend the ceremony.

Since then, another five apprentice programs have been held in the outer islands, with each group creating beautiful jaki-ed, many of which will go up for auction at the September exhibition at the Marshall Islands Resort’s Melele Room. A feature of the annual auction is that Carolyn Yacoe, a friend of the Bishop Museum, brings in a number of precious historic mats for all to see.

Meanwhile, back at USP, one of the most regular guests to the weavers’ house has been Australian Ambassador Martin Quinn and his predecessor Susan Cox. “The Australians have supported the jaki-ed revival program from the beginning,” Irene says.

In 2012, Irene and Maria decided that the program had reached the stage whereby all Marshallese, be they living in RMI or the US, have the chance to access the history of jaki-ed and its revival program. It was decided that the best way to do this was to create a virtual museum on the internet that could be viewed by all.

To this end, a request for proposals was advertised, with the successful bidders being graphic designer and journalist Karen Earnshaw and web site expert Jaston Anjain. They were tasked with creating a virtual museum. “All other virtual museums on the internet have real museums and they simply take photographs of the rooms,” Karen explained. “We had to come up with our own museum, which was a bit of a mental struggle at first.”

The pair stumbled and wavered, but finally began to burst through the creative and mechanical barriers one by one and, with thanks to Robert Reimers Enterprises, it was decided that the jaki-ed museum would be ‘housed’ in the RRE Hotel’s Mon Bokanake, a beautiful thatched meeting house in the hotel’s garden.

The site www.clothingmatsofthemarshalls.com will be a ‘living’ entity: Its contemporary collection will grow, more jaki-ed will become available for purchase in the museum’s store, and the program’s latest expansions will be found in the news archive. It is also hoped that individuals who own historic jaki-ed and museums with mats in their collections will come across the site and provide us with photographs of more historic jaki-ed, plus any relevant information on each mat.

Thank you for visiting our virtual museum today and we hope you return soon to see the latest additions!