Threads of Time: Tradition and Change in Indigenous American Textiles

Browse Items (33 total)

  • Collection: Modern Guatemala

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Sets of tie-dyed warp threads (called cordeles) have been sold in the markets of Guatemala for decades. Without doing the tie-dyeing (jaspé) themselves, weavers can use them to make simple patterns such as in a small tzut. Cordeles in various…

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A santo’s traje, or traditional dress, is complete with a wide faja (belt) such as this striped one. Although most Maya men adopted Hispanic dress, fajas remained one of the few indigenous garments worn by men into the present. This red belt…

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Maya huipíles, indigenous women’s rectangular blouses, vary from one town to another in Guatemala. Weavers from the town of Chimaltenango, in north-central Guatemala, expresses their ethnicity in very skillfully brocaded pieces, with rows of bold…

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As weavers learn from their elders, practice, and become highly skilled, some of the most proficient are able to tie-dye threads so that they spell words, people’s or place’s names, and sometimes even phrases. These are perhaps the most…

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This jaspé tzut shows the use of tie-dyed warps in weaving. Repeatedly dipped in indigo and tied off to preserve white stripes, warps were laboriously prepared before weaving. When untied and placed on the loom in the proper sequence, then the…

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This miniature woman’s blouse was woven for a wooden santa (female saint figure) to wear as she stood or sat on an altar in a Catholic church in San Pedro Sacatepéquez. Dressing saints in traditional Maya attire is an obvious way in which the…

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As weavers learn from their elders, practice, and become highly skilled, some of the most proficient are able to tie-dye threads so that they spell words, people’s or place’s names, and sometimes even phrases. These are perhaps the most…

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This blouse, woven in the 1920s, ranks as the finest Maya textile in the Carlos collection, with its expanse of the natural brown cotton, the darker shade known as cuyuscate and the slightly lighter one ixcaco. Its deep purple-maroon-pink…

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This huipíl is exemplary of early 20th century style blouses made in Chichicastenango. The sun pattern is actually sewn on by the weaver’s husband, as the sun is considered the masculine spiritual force. The black fabric circles represent the…
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