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2023.37.13

Skirt of woven red and indigo striped fabric, decorated with brocaded geometric motifs in a range of different brightly coloured yarns.

2023.37.13

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Collection type
Object
Description
Skirt of woven red and indigo striped fabric, decorated with brocaded geometric motifs in a range of different brightly coloured yarns.
Long description
Skirt constructed from two lengths of red and dark blue striped woven fabric, the red consisting of the rayon known as ‘rojo alemán’ and the blue of cotton dyed with synthetic indigo known as ‘tinte alemán’. There are further decorative warp stripes in orange, pink, yellow, blue, white and black. The two lengths are joined side by side with black cotton, with the ends joined together by a basting stitch in black cotton to form a large tube. The skirt is decorated with vertical bands of bold, single-faced supplementary weft brocaded motifs in various shades of blue, green, pink, purple, orange, yellow and white mercerised cotton. The motifs include blocks of interlocking zigzags, groups of interlacing lines, diagonal lines of chevrons and designs representing maize.
Person
Maker Unknown Maker
Field collector Krystyna Deuss
PRM source Krystyna Deuss
Date / Period
Date made: By December 1993
Date collected
Purchased December 1993
Acquisition information
Donated: 19 June 2023
Materials and processes
Material Cotton Seed Fibre Textile Plant, Material Synthetic Textile, Material Cotton Seed Fibre Yarn Plant, Process Woven, Process Stitched, Process Brocaded Woven, Process Supplementary Weft Woven
Dimensions
Height x Width 1050 x 1070 mm
Object numbers
Accession number: 2023.37.13 Other numbers: C 100
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

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. Even San Rafael Petzal’s ornate festive huipiles from the 1960s tended to be wider than those of Colotenango (2023.37.3).

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.

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

Search terms: Clothing Textile, Clothing, Textile, Skirt