Malia Solomon

Mary "Aunty Malia" Blanchard Solomon (November 24, 1915 – May 8, 2005) was an American textile artist and expert on Hawaiian customs, crafts, and culture.

Solomon researched and traveled across the South Pacific to regain lost knowledge about kapa, the traditional Hawaiian craft of making cloth from the fibers of trees.

[5] Solomon ran Ulu Mau for ten years, while traveling and studying to learn more about the pre-Western cultural traditions of Hawaii.

[3] After the wauke grew to maturity in eighteen months, she experimented with scraping, soaking, and beating the plant fibers until creating a cloth similar to what she had seen at the Bishop Museum.

[6][1] In the 1960s Laurance Rockefeller commissioned Solomon to create fourteen large wall hangings for the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel;[8] her work is still displayed there, after extensive restoration by the Bishop Museum.