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Skirt cloth
unknown - Enlarge image
Skirt cloth
- Place of origin:
Andhra Pradesh, India (possibly, made)
Tamil Nadu, India (possibly, made) - Date:
late 19th century (made)
- Artist/Maker:
unknown (production)
- Materials and Techniques:
Cotton, painted mordant-dyed and drawn resist-dyed
- Museum number:
IS.434-1897
- Gallery location:
In Storage
Patterned cloth such as this was produced in southern India and used for trade with Indonesia in the 19th century. Dyes made from a variety of plants, animals and insects made Indian textiles particularly rich in pattern and colouring. The most important dyes were indigo, chay and madder red. Chay was widely used in southern India and was extracted from the roots of the chay plant (Oldenlandia umbellate). Cloth was first treated with alum -– a mordant that combines with a dye to fix it in a material – and then received the chay dye to produce a rich and fast red. The cloth was also resist dyed, which involves applying an impermeable substance (usually wax) to all the areas not to be dyed with a particular colour (in this case indigo) so that those areas remain undyed. The resist is then removed with hot water. The pattern of this cloth, with its distinct ‘knife-edge’ design at the edges, signifies that it was a skirt cloth.
