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in their own right on occasion … . The Guaraní artisans, in addition, incorporated
the European baroque style with native images such as birds, mburucuyá
(passion fruit), flowers, papaya leaves, and the caraguatá plant (a kind of wild
pineapple)." These are some of the same designs that are woven into ñandutí
and give it its own originality.
There is little doubt that the colonial era missions and reduction
workshops were primary contributors to the initial local production and
propagation of ñandutí. It was customary to use fine lace for altar cloths and
vestments. The indigenous women would have been drafted to produce such
lace, especially in the missions. As Ganson has noted (2003:61), the Guaraní
spun and wove their own clothing and were employed making cotton cloth as
part of their contribution to the Crown. In fact, work involving weaving is the
most consistent type of women’s labor in South America generally. “The types of
cloth changed and the amounts of time taken up by this production intensified”
and the patterning was adapted to the various new contingencies (Kellogg
2005:64). However, fine sewing, including lacework, was a common task of
upper class women in Spain and Europe, especially in conjunction with Church
work. This becomes important in the era of independence from Spain.
Ñandutí was utilized for all types of church vestments and altar clothes
and linens. According to Josefina Pla (1993:4), the reduction and mission
churches facilitated the development and florescence of ñandutí as a future
national ethnic identity marker. Women were put to work making lace to
embellish the temples of the Lord. Altar clothes were of the highest quality and
the priests always dressed sumptuously during services to impress new converts
and the congregation.
Upper class women had long been accustomed to doing this work. They
would wear the delicate lace in the form of mantillas, which were de rigueur
especially for church attendance. As more women migrated to the colonial
backwater that would become Paraguay and the transition from a colony to an
independent state was made, both upper and lower class women were the
carriers of textile traditions, particularly ñandutí.
Upper class women used mantillas, collars, and various type of
ornamentation made from ñandutí. According to José Rodriguez Alcalá (1907,
cited in Pla 1998:63), “there were no wives or daughters of good families that
did not know how to make lace and to spend part of each day in this activity …
today this old and senorial custom is lost but in the past the grand dames would
sew ñandutíes in the shady interior of their houses. In the countryside, the
daughters of good families did the same.”
Independence
Between independence and 1840, Paraguay was ruled by "El Supremo,"
the dictator José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia. He has often been maligned in
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