Woven cotton; Mexico; 1875-1890

Cotton rebozo woven with a pattern of alternating stripes of blue, blue/white ikat, blue, white, blue/white ikat, blue, narrow white, blue, blue/white ikat and white. At either end there is a warp fringe formed by single knots.

1931 description: Scarf, woven with a tinted cotton warp.

1975 description: Perraje Jaspeado (tied-dyed shawl). This is a typical example of a two colour (indigo blue/white) perraje where some stripes have simple jaspe patterning. The weft in this example is white cotton; the weave is warp-faced.
JASPE is the Indian term for tied-dyed yarns; JASPEADO describes the cloth woven from these yarns.

Bequeathed by Alfred Percival Maudslay

Registered File no. 2743/1931.

When acquired by the Museum in 1931 it was thought possible that this textile might have been woven in Switzerland, or that the yarn might have been dyed/printed in Switzerland.
Ann P Rowe (Curator of Western Hemisphere Textiles, The Textile Museum, Washington DC: personal communication 1997) said this and other rebozos in the Maudslay Collection look more like Mexican than Guatemalan products and the presence of other Mexican textiles in his Collection means that such an attribution would not be out of line. Mexican rebozos, both old and new, use more finely spun yarms and have narrower stripes than do Guatemalan ones. The Eisen Collection made in Guatemala in 1902 contains nothing similar although a shawl that might be similar to this was illustrated by Josephine Wood in 'Indian Costumes of Guatemala', Austria, 1966 p.42).

The resist-dyed pattern in some of the warp threads is known as jaspe and was a popular way of decorating fabric used for shawls and for skirts. Shawls such as this would have been woven commercially on a treadle loom (introduced by the Spaniards in the 16th century) and would have been sold by merchants in village markets.

T.21-1931