Skip to content
Pitt Rivers Museum
AboutHire the MuseumNewsletterUniversity of Oxford

2023.37.22

Tzute, a red woven cloth with supplementary weft brocaded motifs in various colours.

2023.37.22

Digital asset copyright: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford

Terms and Conditions

If you wish to order a high-resolution image and/or licence its use for print or web publication, exhibition, film, promotional product or any other use, whether in the academic or commercial sector of any print run, then please visit photographic services.

Collection type
Object
Description
Tzute, a red woven cloth with supplementary weft brocaded motifs in various colours.
Long description
Tzute, a square cloth made from two woven lengths of the rayon/cotton mix known as ‘rojo alemán’. The two panels have been joined with a simple stitch of orange and magenta cotton. The warp-faced ground-cloth is interspersed with a sequence of orange pinstripes. The tzute is decorated across both panels with rows of single-faced supplementary weft brocaded geometric motifs, including lozenges, interlocking chevrons, and lozenge-in-square shapes in many different colours of cotton and acrylic thread.
Cultural groups
Mam
Person
Maker Wife of Diego Sales Jeronimo
Other owner Diego Sales Jeronimo
Field collector Krystyna Deuss
PRM source Krystyna Deuss
Date / Period
Date made: By April 1984
Date collected
Purchased April 1986
Acquisition information
Donated: 19 June 2023
Materials and processes
Material Cotton Textile Plant, Material Synthetic Yarn, Process Stitched, Process Woven, Process Supplementary Weft Woven, Process Brocaded Woven, Material Synthetic Textile
Dimensions
Length x Width 1050 x 920 mm
Object numbers
Accession number: 2023.37.22 Other numbers: SRP 6
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).

There is no difference in design between male and female sashes (2023.37.19, 2023.37.20), or in the red striped and brocaded su’tes (2023.37.23). However, the oldest sash and su’te in my Colotenango collection came from Diego Sales, an old man in San Rafael Petzal. The ground cloth of both items was woven by his wife in solid red German rayon, either without or with barely distinguishable orange stripes (2023.37.18, 2023.37.22). There is a difference in how men and women wear their su’tes and sashes. Women tie their sashes at the back and use their su’tes to carry shopping, cover their baskets, or shield their heads from the sun. Men tie their sashes in front, sometimes tucking the ends out of sight, and wear their su’tes slung over one or both shoulders.

See Related Documents File for more detail. [JMC 26/11/2024]

Search terms: Clothing Textile, Clothing, Textile