Beautifully said Mac, all points covered. The cheap dye is wantex...wicked wantex I call it in the field,,,,the girls know I will not touch it and will always give/pay more for natural dyes....the tricky thing was, say 20 years ago when I first began, that the girls were bored with the natural dyes and loved the new bright factory coloured thread and dyes hence for about 10 years masses of them were woven,,,fortunately both the men and women found that the colours were not fast and faded beyond their natural colour counterparts and the thread itself in some cases did not wear nearly as well and in the case of rayon,,,if one thread pulled and broke the rest of the weaving was soon to follow. Getting in there and talking about the integrity of cultural textiles and buying (as you know Mac) was the key to keep much of the spinning and dying going. There are some local boys in TTU that do the circuits of the local weekly markets and purchase from the women or their men folk. They pay very fair prices and are a regular source of income to the households in their area. They in turn sell to travellers and traders that find them and make regular trips to the bigger dealers in Kupang those dealers in turn feed the Bali , Surabaya traders. TTS does not have this regular buyer in place system and many changes have echoed throughout the 23 years I have traded there as a result of this. I once put a proposal to Womens' micro finance groups to fund a set up in TTS that would provide some consistency for the weavers by having a purchase point in town...sadly to no avail....I did not know how to speak the language of development back then...I could just see the need. I have begun University at the tender age of 53 to learn about AID development and have found Sustainability which has been part of my language also for the last 35 years. I hope to combine the two and see what I can generate in that eastern end of Indo. I put the photo of Nenek above and she delights in telling me how much "itam" HITAM/BLACK comes out of the dirtier cloths. Only recently, as she is aging, is she allowing to massage those strong scrawny shoulders after she has taken to a batch of textiles with much the same method as you describe Mac.
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File comment: This textile is from TTS/SoE area..not sure exactly where, I now have 4 from that weaver and her style is very distinctive. It is like a crossroads piece, the solid backgrounds are usually red, however I wear a burgundy one and it is around my neck as I type (winter here) and her buna style is recognisable from a distance. I hope to meet her one day and tell her.

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_________________ Julie Emery
www.timortreasures.com
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