A 'rubu' or rectangular basket made in Fiji, woven in a series of contrasting stripes with small strips of pandanus leaf. The interior is lined with wide woven strips of the same leaf. A long handle of twisted cord is attached to two shorter handles.

Such bags were popular with early European visitors to Fiji and seem to have been a common exchange item. 'Rubu' come in a range of designs, usually repeated on both sides. They may have been used to hold 'masi seavu’ (turbans made of bark cloth).

This example is similar to one in the Pitt Rivers Museum collected by Captain Denham in 1854. The NMM example comes from the collections of the London Missionary Society, and may have belonged to the missionary John Williams (1769-1839). LMS missionaries attempted to establish a mission in Tonga from 1797 but were unsuccessful, and overtaken by Methodist missionaries from 1835. If the association of this 'rubu' with Williams is correct, therefore, this bag is likely to have been acquired before 1835, and is therefore a particularly early example.