I thought that I would share with the forum a charming child's jacket which I collected in Gu Ping township, Congjian county, Guizhou this May. The jacket came from the Miao of San Gang village. I am not sure whether the jacket is that of a little girl or a little boy but the style of the jacket echoes that of a girl/woman's jacket with the added triangles at the side front and back - see IMGP3891, the first image in the next post below). It is quite interesting as it has several different textile techniques. The base fabric is a very shiny indigo which has been beaten and then treated with a substance, possibly egg white, to give a stiff and very shiny surface. There is embroidery, I think some decorative weaving and also some wax resist. The wax resist is not created with a wax knife but, I believe, either a slim piece of bamboo or a feather quill. It has chicken feather trimming and some seeds.
I did not see the jacket being worn. It was bought from an older woman who brought it with her when a couple of hundred or so villagers from San Gang village walked the three hour trek from their village to meet us (after torrential rain) on the road near the Dong village of Yin Tang in Gu Ping township. About 45 dancers and musicians accompanied by what seemed like all the rest of the villagers able to make the trek (not very tiny children nor the very old) came to the mini festival which they created and all enjoyed. We had the tremendous experience of seeing the dancers and musicians dressing up in their festival finery - the young boys unusually had very splendid costumes. They turned a drained paddy field into a performance ground and played and danced for us. Some of the dances seemed to mimic the movement of birds; they used quite a lot of white feathers as decoration and what looks like chickens appear in their embroidery.
I am posting some photos of the child's jacket. In the next post I show the girls and boys from Sa Gang donning their festival costume and then dancing in full costume.
In the next post I will show a shot of the 'resist' (not wax but gum from a tree, possibly one of the maple family) which creates it and the slim bamboo twig which may have created the design lying on a wax-resist skirt hem. We had seen this the day before in what must be a related Miao group in Ba Sha (or Baisha) village, Cheng Guan township, Congjian county. (Skirts worn by older women from both villages were very similar as was embroidery on their aprons.) In Deryn O’Connor’s book ‘Miao Costumes from Guizhou Province South West China’ published by the James Hockey Gallery, now part of Surrey Institute of Art and Design, she has some clothing from Ba Sha (or Baisha) village which she terms ‘Rongshui style described on pages 56, 57 and 60 and shown on page 58 figures 105-108. Under the later section of the book which covers techniques, on page 74, there are two photos – 136. Baisha girl waxing and 137. Baisha quill waxing tool. I gave Deryn a ring and she has given permission for me to post these two photos on the forum – see separate post below. She also confirmed that slim twigs of bamboo were also used as an alternative to a quill. She shared her excitement with me of the use of tools which could have pre-dated a knowledge of metal working. (I was able to buy copies of this book last year and it is still showing as a catalogue which can be bought at
http://www.surrart.ac.uk/index.cfm?articleid=1592 ). Deryn in the catalogue – page 76 - talks of the girl in 137 “very carefully waxing areas of pattern shaped to fit the top of aprons and the strip on gaiters. In this case the top surface of the cloth has been treated with a starch or gum to make it smooth. The wax only sits on the surface and does not penetrate the cloth. A good resist is achieved by dyeing the cloth folded over so that the dye cannot reach the centre – in Baisha both outer sides are decorated with waxed patterns.”
In due course I hope to create photogalleries of both Ba Sha village and of the villagers from San Gang. When these are live I will add links to the galleries from these posts.
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Pamela
http://www.tribaltextiles.infoon-line tribal textiles resource
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