tribaltextiles.info

Could this possibly be an Isinai funeral blanket? There are two published: in The People and Art of the Philippines on page 229 and in Handwoven Textiles of South-east Asia on page 178. I also have two, one of which is warp ikat and the other supp. weft woven designs. All four blankets are very similar and have mirror image patterns in the warp.

The textile in this post does not have repeated mirror images. It also has very realistic patterns of humans, birds and crocodiles which is somewhat different from the Isinai textiles. Could these differences indicate that it is a newer production from the Banaue area of Ifugao? The extra, vertical, red stripes in the center and the lack of fringes are other departures from the Isinai style.

Does anyone else have any textiles similar to this piece? I will try to get mine photographed and post them when I am back in Japan in April-May. I hope other members can add something more before then.

Best Regards, MAC

Hi MAC

Thanks for your contribution to this thread. I was feeling a bit guilty that none of our members had been able to give any help. I had looked through some of my books but come to no conclusion myself. I will have a look via the Philippines route as I didn't 'go that way' up 'til now.

Best,

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Pamela

http://www.tribaltextiles.info
on-line tribal textiles resource

Hi:

I know nothing about Philippine textiles but own Sinaunang Habi - Philippine Ancestral Weave (1991) - so I paged through it to see if there is anything similar - and there isn't.

The book, which was quite expensive when new, is only $33 on Amazon now http://www.amazon.com/Sinaunang-habi-Ph ... 9718792007

If anyone posts textile photos, I'll be happy to check to see whether the book covers them. The textiles and photos are great -but there is, alas, no index.

I'm not an expert on Indonesian textiles but have seen many and this doesn't look like a pattern that I'm familiar with.

Sorry that I couldn't be of any concrete assistance.

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Anna

Hi Anna

Yes, this is a beautiful book! I am sure I paid much more than this for my copy. Quite a 'find'. The photography is excellent. Rather 'staged' but makes the costumes look magnificent. They sort of 'glow'.

Strange with the ikat textile on this thread. It looks familiar to me but yet I can't pin it down. May just be that various aspects of it are found in other textiles but not all together as in this piece. I suppose it could be a relatively modern textile 'inspired' by various influences.

thanks for your contribution!

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Pamela

http://www.tribaltextiles.info
on-line tribal textiles resource

Thanks everyone for your replies it has been interesting to hear what people think. I would like to clarify why I think it may be Philippine, I was going through all the threads on the site and came across a reference, in Pamela's thread titled,'Philippines', to Eric Anderson wherein he referred to a couple of other internet sites. One of them linked to an exhibition in New York in 2008 of the Reimann collection where there were a couple of textiles displayed that had similar characteristics. So far these are the closest in basic style to mine, hence the conjecture on my part. I've since read the Fraser-Lu book on South East Asian Textiles and have seen some descriptions of Philippine textiles that also look as if they could apply.

I would appreciate any further comment that would help to place this piece in context.

Cheers

Warren

You quite got me worried there as I created the on-line exhibit http://www.tribaltextiles.info/Exhibiti ... txtls.html of the Reimann physical exhibit in NY in 2008! I have just had another look at the textiles in the exhibit and can't quite see the link.

By the way, several of these beautiful textiles from Dr Reimann's collection are now in the collection of The Textile Museum in Washington. It would be great if they were to appear in TM exhibit sometime in the future. I think one or two did appear on display at the TM as new acquisitions. It is good to know that they have gone to a good home.

Best,

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Pamela

http://www.tribaltextiles.info
on-line tribal textiles resource

Oh dear, my profound apology on the misattribution, for some reason I thought that Eric Anderson had created both sites. The textile that looked most like mine is on the free standing wall right below a second textile, in the lower right picture of the 6 under the title "the exhibition". I've just seen none that have the multiple red and blue panels with some white designs within the blue panels like mine, as a neophyte ignorance is bliss. Again my apology on the misattribution.

Kind Regards;

Warren

I received a suggestion that I should take a photo of the entire piece at less angle than the original post, so I'm attaching it here. There is no mirror image as MAC has pointed out, instead the panels seem to be done in a 'book matched' manner very much like a veneered panel on furniture. So it is sort of mirrored along the long axis from the middle out. I hope this is more helpful. Thanks

Warren

Hi Warren

No worries re attribution of website exhibit of Reimann's Filipino textiles. The whole thing really started when Kim Reimann, one of Dr Reimann's two daughters, contacted me about how to get publicity for the physical exhibit in NY. I suggested the forum http://www.tribaltextiles.info/communit ... php?t=1093 and 'invited' the Reimann’s (not thinking it would happen) to take photos of the exhibit and then to let me mount a web exhibit so that it could reach a wider audience. Some months later the images arrived and I put the exhibit together. Eric Anderson very kindly wrote the article http://www.tribaltextiles.info/articles ... xtiles.htm and sent some photos so that I could put together an article on the main tribaltextiles.info (tti)website. There was clearly interest out there in Filipino textiles but nothing on the tti website. Gradually access to info is being improved. See http://www.tribaltextiles.info/Countrie ... ppines.htm

Re identifying your textile. I think that it will be the resist motifs (achieved via warp ikat - or binding the threads with ties so that the threads in these areas resist the dye - applied to the threads before weaving) which will be the factors that lead eventually to identification. The weaving techniques themselves can be found in many places across the Philippines and the Indonesian archipelago.

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Pamela

http://www.tribaltextiles.info
on-line tribal textiles resource

I don't recall ever seeing anything like this from Indonesia. The Philippines is a maybe. I know this may be a longshot, but could this be from Guatemala? Some of the patterns and structure remind me of the very few Guatemalan textiles I have seen.

Interesting single white band at each end, resembling the fold-over points on Central Asian ikat textiles.

I don't think it is Guatemalan - most of the ikat there is for shawls, which are geometric and the dimensions are very different, plus their ends are sort of large pompons. Even commercial Guatemalan fabric made into clothing in the 1980s was geometric.

Again, I'm not an expert on Guatemalan ikat but I've seen a fair amount of it - and of Mexican - and I have not seen anything like this.

Pamela - the Philippine textile book was, I think $250 in the early 1990s, so the amazon price is extraordinary.

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Anna

I come into the 'not Guatemalan camp' also! I have just had a blast of colour (on a horrid grey, windy and wet day in Canterbury) and been through Ann Hecht's Textiles from Guatemala for the British Museum and Gianni Vecchiato's glorious photos in Guatemala Rainbow and there is nothing that seems to me to chime with our current 'mystery textile'. However, it certainly brightened up my morning!

best,

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Pamela

http://www.tribaltextiles.info
on-line tribal textiles resource

I have a fair knowledge of Guatemalan textiles, having collected them in the late 60's and the 70's. Dissimilarities are in the way they use indigo, figures are not the same as Guatemalan figures, which are usually more symmetrical or far less symmetrical. , finishing of ends is different (usually pompoms or macrame, ikat (with exceptions of skirts) are usually used only on shawls, and lastly the human and house figures are simply not in the Guatemalan style. I also showed this to my favorite Guatemalan textile expert, Susan Turner, whose first and last reaction was that this was Asian.

I bet on Philippines with a small possibility of Timor.

Bill Hornaday