Textiles from Guatemala

Today's lecture, presented by the Textile Museum of GW University, featuring Raymond Senuk.

These presentations are by academics, researchers and collectors, showing examples of textiles, often indigenous textiles of people whose culture  they've traveled to live among and study.  Unlike the Textiles and Tea series, these are not themselves makers.

I'm happy to note the increasing frequency with which they note the precious textiles are in the custody of the original culture, some of them surrendered by major museums and collectors for the purpose. 

Some of these pictures I had to crop more than I wanted, to eliminate rubbish captioning which didn't come within a country mile of having the terms loaded on their algorithm. And the presenters are not very techie, often allowing captions to obliterate the very image being discussed. I deleted a lot that way, too.

Onward. It was a very well organized presentation, classic academic style, useful to give the framework to see what it is you're seeing. 

Not exciting unless you're excited, as I was, about the murex dye, brilliant different colors, from the exudate of -- snails! He made a point of explaining the snails are not hurt, just lifted off the rock, placed on the raw thread, and replaced after they've deposited the fluids. This is a renewable natural dye source. Just so you know when you see the dye listing.

There are 120 recorded styles of huipils, the main garment people wear. Often villages have their own preferred patterns, or on it may reflect what's available in dyes and threads, as well as the differing skills of the makers, usually women in this tradition.

Religion gets intertwined with the story, with the devotion to the Black Christ, and the dressing of statues of the Blessed Virgin with huipils, particularly on festival days

The scenes are from a festival in mid January, he didn't specify which. However the village is San Pedro, so that might be the connection.

The huipils for the statues are clearly different from regular huipils. The neck opening is tiny, since they are draped on the statue, not put over the head like a woman's huipil.

You see women here with the interesting mix of covering the head, Catholic style, and wearing the traditional huipils, one as a dress, one as a shawl. Not all of them observe the covering. 

The underskirt shows the date of making. Irreverent to lift the robe, but they rationalized it as research.

Huipils for regular people, and weaving patterns

Most of the weaving is done on back strap looms, as this weaver shows

Amazing to see the origin of the wonderful textiles we just observed. Not pictured is the world class skill of the weaver. 

I like the respectful tone of this speaker. We're getting that more as researchers become educated in the etiquette of observing cultures generous enough to let them in.