- Collection type
- Object
- Description
- Striped cotton textile used as a baby wrap.
- Long description
- Striped cotton textile used as a baby wrap. The textile is formed of one length of woven, warp-faced cotton, mostly off-white with indigo (tinte alemán) stripes of various widths, but also with coloured stripes that include brown, green, pink, red, yellow, blue and red. The white cotton is thick and handspun. The slight bleeding of blue dye from the indigo stripes has given the fabric a grey/pale blue cast. One warp end is folded and hemmed down by hand with white cotton.
- Geographical reference
- Cultural groups
- Mam
- Date / Period
- Date made: By November 1985
- Date collected
- Purchased November 1985
- Acquisition information
- Donated: 19 June 2023
- Materials and processes
- Material Cotton Textile Plant, Process Woven, Process Stitched
- Dimensions
- Length x Width 860 x 450 mm
- Object numbers
- Accession number: 2023.37.26 Other numbers: SRP 13
- Research and responses
Information supplied by the collector/donor Krystyna Deuss:
In the 1950s and 1960s rather than carry babies in their decorative su’tes, women used a separate woven white cloth with occasional composite red stripes (2023.37.24). By the late 1980s only a few of these textiles were still in use, substituted by either the decorative su’tes, or cheaper commercial Totonicipán utility cloths or shawls. However, the custom of wrapping specially woven striped lengths of cloth around small children who are too young to wear skirts or trousers still continued (2023.37.26). Babies usually wore home woven hats (2023.37.25).
See Related Documents File for more detail. [JMC 26/11/2024]
Search terms: Clothing Textile, Children and Childcare, Clothing, Textile, Baby-carrier