Mae Festa 50 Years of Collecting Textiles - Peter Pap Oriental Rugs

AFRICA – Sub-Sahara
Man’s Festive Tunic (overleaf)
Mid-late 20 th Century
Woodabe People, Niger
Balanced strip weave. Homespun indigo cotton
ground (save for black/white center strip),
polychrome (red, white, green, yellow, orange)
embroidery and strips of scalloped white
cotton appliqué.
208.5 x 26 cm 82 x 10½ in
These striking costumes are fashioned by the immediate
female relatives of a young Woodabe (also called Bororo)
man for the now famous annual courting dance in
which Woodabe males present themselves to the young
women of the tribe as possible mates. They do so by
beautifying themselves with cosmetics and rolling their
eyes dramatically while engaging in a row dance before
the young women. This tunic displays no fewer than
twenty-two different designs or motifs in its embroidery,
usually in paired panels divided by a strip of white
appliqué, in three instances in one larger panel (69
panels overall). The ground is formed of the narrowest
of gauze-like, homespun indigo-dyed cloth, 1.4 cm (½ in
across), eighteen of them across the tunic, plus the one,
somewhat broader central strip, which appears gray due
to the alternating black and white warps. (detail facing page)
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