loincloth; textile

A man's loincloth made from cotton and dyed with natural dyes. The weaver is Eu Dane. The textile is made in piece (1 kene) on a backstrap loom. The fabric is mainly warp-faced ikat. At the shorter sides red and yellow weft threads have been twined to form a chevron border. The ends of the warp are twisted into a fringe. The threads for the 13 ikat bands with the main motif were dyed in morinda (red) before dyed in indigo in order to obtain a darker shade of blue-black. The red dye can be seen at the edges of the motif which gives a peculiar aspect to the weaving. Although the red dye can be seen in the ikated parts, it is not of a 'worapi' type. The motif ' wo hepi hegai' was earlier restricted to nobility. Such weavings were made to show prestige. Each ikat pattern band is framed. The borders consist of a thin red lines, and narrow bands with ikat dots. At the selvedges forming top and bottom of the cloth the ikat band is framed wider border, including a toothed band. [See original description for details.]

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