Sash of woven silk and metal thread.

1931 Description: sash, woven silk and gilt thread and silver strips. The pattern consists of bands formed by the warp threads of gilt separated by bands of red, white, yellow, green and blue silk. There are six stripes of silver weft, which have now almost disappeared. The sash is bound with green silk and is now composed of six pieces joined together.

1975 Description: The weave is warp-faced; the weft is pale yellow silk with six areas of silver weft, now gone - where it is missing the warp floats in six stripes forming three textured stripes along each side of the length of the object.

Rosario de Polanco, Directora Technica, Museo Ixchel de Traje Indigena, Guatemala City (personal communication 1989): 'Possibly used by priests on ceremonial occasions.'

Notes (1997):
Made from six pieces joined across the width; these vary in length between 12" and 15" and an inch tuck has been made by one of the seams as if it were important to achieve a certain finished length. The green binding around all four sides was applied after the seaming had been completed.
The warp is yellow silk; there are 27 threads per inch and each thread seems to have a slight Z-twist. The fabric is weft-faced plain weave; there are 138 shoots per inch and the colours of the silk are: dark green, green, yellow, pink, light pink and light blue with yellow metal strip wound around a yellow silk core.
The sequence is:
(i) broad band of yellow metal thread
(ii) pink
(iii) light pink
(iv) white
(v) yellow
(vi) green
(vii) dark green
(viii) pink
(ix) 4 shoots of metal thread and a narrow band of one shoot of white and one shoot of light blue and then four shoots of metal thread.
Bands (i) to (viii) are repeated in reverse order.