1928.69.163

Collection type

Object

Description

Girl’s skirt of dark blue with light blue longitudinal stripes and thin orange lines of supplementary weft.

Long description

Girl’s skirt of dark blue with light blue longitudinal stripes and thin orange lines of supplementary weft. The cloth is formed of two lengths of dark blue cotton textile stitched together with black yarn. Each length has two thin blue stripes formed of three warp threads. The cloth is decorated with pairs of orange lines which run widthways, and are formed of single threads of orange supplementary weft. One length of the cloth has 40 of such pairs (with one actually having three lines), the other length has 41 pairs of lines. The ends of each length of cloth are decorated with transverse stripes of orange alternating with lines of blue, these formed by changing the colour of the weft threads. At one end of the cloth there are four orange stripes and three blue lines. At the other end, one half has three orange stripes and three blue lines and the other half has five orange stripes, three blue lines and one black line. The orange stripes vary between three to four weft picks, while the blue lines comprise a single bundle of threads as one pick. The warp ends of the cloth have been tightly twisted to form a fringe at each short edge. The textile comprises two panels, both of them are in plain-weave. 9 warps and 8 wefts are in 1cm2. Both panels are created using dark blue and blue threads on warp ends and predominantly dark blue weft picks except for the red and blue weft picks used towards both fringed sides. Red and dark blue threads are in Z twist (singles), while multi-plied blue thread is in S twist. Four warp ends are used to create a fringe in Z twist (zzzzssZ), 90mm in length on average. 2 panels are attached edge-to-edge using simple looping stitches. Please see annotated image for further details. [MT 22/07/2021]

Geographical reference

India

Asia > Southern Asia > India

Nagaland; Sungratsu village

Cultural groups

Ao Naga

Person

Field collector James Philip Mills

PRM source James Philip Mills

Date / Period

Date made: Before 1921

Date collected

7 March 1921

Acquisition information

Loaned: 06/1921 Donated: 1928

Materials and processes

Material Cotton Textile Plant, Material Cotton Yarn Plant, Process Woven, Process Dyed, Process Stitched, Process Supplementary Weft Woven

Dimensions

Length: max 1325 mm, Width: max 607 mm

Object numbers

Accession number: 1928.69.163

Associated publications

This textile has been hand drawn as a colour pencil drawing reproduced as fig.69 on page 235 of 'Naga Textiles: design, technique, meaning and effect of a local craft tradition in Northeast India' by Marion Wettstein, published 2014 Vienna , Arnoldsche Art publishers, Stuttgart. The drawing is accompanied with the caption: 'A (jamir clan) girl's first skirt from Sangsatsu village (PRM Acc. No. 128.69.163, 1920s)' [FB 22/10/2014]

Search terms: Textile, Clothing, Children and Childcare, Status, Skirt