2023.37.3

Collection type

Object

Description

Huipil of red and white striped fabric decorated with supplementary weft brocading.

Long description

Huipil constructed from three panels of woven warp-faced fabric in red with white stripes. The panels have been stitched together with a randa stitch in mercerised cotton in pink, green, yellow, blue, purple and orange. The main red thread is the lustrous, predominantly rayon thread known as 'rojo alemán'. The fabric has a white cotton weft, barely visible beneath the tightly packed warp threads. The huipil is decorated with single-faced supplementary weft brocading with geometric designs picked out in various colours of cotton and acrylic yarn. The round-cut neckline is edged with mercerised cotton in various shades.

Geographical reference

Guatemala

Latin America and the Caribbean > Central America > Guatemala

Cultural groups

Mam

Person

Maker Maria Cova Valasquez

Field collector Krystyna Deuss

PRM source Krystyna Deuss

Date / Period

Date made: Late 1960s

Date collected

Purchased April 1986

Acquisition information

Donated: 19 June 2023

Materials and processes

Material Cotton Textile Plant, Material Synthetic Textile, Material Cotton Yarn Plant, Material Synthetic Yarn, Process Woven, Process Stitched, Process Supplementary Weft Woven, Process Brocaded Woven, Process Embroidered

Dimensions

Height x Width: Max 570 x 1150 mm

Object numbers

Accession number: 2023.37.3 Other numbers: SRP 2

Research and responses

Information supplied by the collector/donor Krystyna Deuss:

The municipality of Colotenango includes not only the lower lying lands around the town but also hamlets in the high Cuchumatán mountains to the north at altitudes of over 2,000 metres. In the 1980s many young women of that area developed an idiosyncratic dress style of their own, see 2023.37.1, a huipil from the hamlet of Canoguitas, near San Pedro Necta.

The township of San Rafael Petzal used to belong to Colotenango before 1890, so people there use the same dress. However, changes in dress styles have been slower in San Rafael than in Colotenango and in the late 1980s there were several men still dressed in white with traditional home woven sashes (2023.37.18) and su’tes (2023.37.22). Many older women were still wearing simple striped huipiles (2023.37.2) and navy skirts (2023.37.12). These simple huipiles were very wide and longer than the norm and were worn bundled up at the back.

My informants in Colotenango and San Rafael concurred that in president Ubico’s reign (1931-1944) times were hard and wages were very low, so only the wealthy could afford to buy red yarns. Therefore, huipiles and su’tes were mainly white with occasional red stripes, and skirts were plain navy-blue cotton or of black wool. Skirts in this area were also woven on hip-strap looms. Under President Arbenz better wages were paid and so the Maya could afford to use red yarns in their weavings. Even San Rafael Petzal’s ornate festive huipiles from the 1960s tended to be wider than those of Colotenango (2023.37.3).

In Colotenango the women I spoke to all agreed that by the 1950s huipiles with red brocading were the norm and that skirts had red stripes as well as brocaded motifs, but far less at that time than what had become fashionable in the 1970s (2023.37.13). The ornate, so-called traditional Colotenango huipiles which were regularly brocaded with the prized red rayon from Germany called “alemán” (imported between the mid-1950s and -60s) as well as quality mercerized cottons, were often saved for best wear i.e., for church, market days and festivals. These were normally made from three panels (2023.37.3, 2023.37.4).

See Related Documents File for more detail. [JMC 22/11/2024]

For a photograph of Maria Cova Valasquez wearing and surrounded by several festive huipiles see related documents file. [JMC 22/11/2024]

Search terms: Clothing Textile, Clothing, Textile, Blouse, Shirt