Cotton and silk; Mexico; 1870-1899

1931 Description: Sash woven in cotton and silk. The ground, of black cotton, has a pattern of narrow stripes in orange silk. At either end there is a very wide knotted fringe of black cotton and orange silk. Even if the sash is of European weaving, the fringe is probably of local make.

1975 Description: This shawl is most definately related to T.40-1931, even though the weaving of this shawl is less complicated.

1997 Notes: The fringe is formed by the warp threads at eithe end. The orange stripe is a combination of bright orange silk and light orange cotton. It has not been possible to count the black warp and weft threads per inch. The orange silk and cotton forms a supplementary warp - is this a 'flushing' warp?

Bequeathed by Alfred Percival Maudslay

Registered File no. 2743/1931.

When this was acquired by the Museum it was thought to be from Guatemala.
In 1975 a note was added to the effect that it might have been imported into Guatemala. Perhaps a special loom had been imported from Europe, or a Spanish colonial weaver in Guatemala had been influenced by jaspe and tried to imitate it, or perhaps the shawls were imported from Europe? Certainly shawls like these were popular with both the Guatemalan Indians and the Spanish colonists. See T.87-1931 for general information on shawls and jaspe in Guatemala.

Ann P Rowe, Curator of Western Hemisphere Textiles, The Textile Museum, Washington DC (personal communication 1997): 'The rebozos in the Maudslay Collection look much morel like Mexican rebozos than like any Guatemalan examples I have seen. The Eisen Collection, made in Guatemala in 1902, contains nothing similar. Mexican rebozos, both old and new, use more finely spun yarns and have narrower stripes than do Guatemalan ones. The presence of other Mexican textiles in the Maudslay Collection means that this attribution is not out of line.'

T.32-1931