Man's cotton jacket with applied panels of silk damask, printed cotton and cowrie shells, Kachin State, Burma, ca. 1890-1910

Man's cotton jacket with applied panels of silk damask, printed cotton and cowrie shells. Black and red, decorated with applied panels of red Chinese silk damask, and English floral print (probably Manchester printing).

The body of the jacket is made of two strips of hand-woven cloth. These strips are folded in half, the fold forming the shoulders, and then over stitched together leaving a front opening. Additional strips of cloth have been formed into tubes for sleeves and over stitched at the shoulders. Decorated with a 'key' pattern, in brick-red, between closely ribbed borders. The applied panels decorate the back and the breast, and the silk damask ones have a geometrical pattern in red, and below them are panels of printed cotton which have a floral design in orange and pale green. The cowrie shells are sewn on to the applied bands as well as the short sleeves and the 'key' patterned parts of the jacket. With woven border of coarse red-brown wool.

Jacket worn by a man of the Rawang or Maru a hilltribe of Kachin State. Decorated with applied panels of red Chinese silk damask, English floral print and cowrie shells.

Previously thought to be from the Akha ethnic of the Shan States. Re-attributed to the Maru or Rawang of Kachin State by Sandra Dudley of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford University. 1999.

This panel of Chinese silk and English floral patterned material--highlighted with auspicious cowrie shells--is from the back of a Maru man's jacket. Similar appliqué decorates the two halves of the front. These two imported fabrics add distinction to an otherwise plain square shaped black jacket with its woven border of coarse red wool. The jacket would have been worn with either pants of a Burmese-style or a black, dark green, and purple plaid longyi. A large turban would have completed the costume.

The Maru, a farming people, are a major sub-group of the Kachins, who occupy the great tract of hill-country in Northern Burma around the headwaters of the Chindwin and Irrawaddy rivers.

IM.147-1929