Coastal Color: Textiles from Guatemala's Pacific Foothills [Catalog] Page: 2
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Coastal su 'ts were not cut from a longer fabric; without
exception, the examples in the Nasher and Williams col-
lections have the four woven edges (selvedges) indicative
of textiles woven on the backstrap or stick loom. In
terms of aesthetics, the four selvedges represent an inten-
tional boundary for the composition - just as a
stretched canvas defines the area for a painting and a page
in a sketchbook the area for a drawing. Design in coastal
textiles is primarily color as line; it is usually carried by
the warp, by the yarns put on the loom before the weaving
begins. In the process of warping the loom, the weaver
measures color and pattern to establish the harmonies
and tensions that coalesce as art in the completed textile.
Most of the coastal pieces in the Nasher and Williams
collections are tentatively attributed to three communi-
ties, San Sebastian in Retalhuleu and Samayac and Santo
Domingo Suchitepdquez in Suchitep6quez. Those from
San Sebastiin show a preference for stripes in purple,
red, and sometimes white cotton, usually with a cluster
of darker or wider stripes down the center; their brocaded
figures are characteristically indistinct and give the
impression of having been sprinkled across the surface
(fig. 1).5 Two prestigious yarns are juxtaposed in the red-
dish purple stripes of the Nasher su 't, a handspun yarn
that probably represents the prized shellfish dye and a
commercial plied yarn thought to be an expensive
imitation.During the 1930s, the women of San Sebastiin wore an
extravagant ceremonial hairband distinguished by its
astounding length of 15 to 20 yards and its use of silk in
the warp. Blocks of lustrous red or magenta silk and
matte reddish purple cotton alternate throughout the
length of the band, the ends of which are finished with
short, thick tassels in magenta or red silk. The last yard
or so of the end that completed the halo-style wrapping
is usually embroidered in silk with flowers (Nasher Col-
lection, promised gift) or a combination of meandering
vines and birds (Nasher Collection, 1983.477). Silk pom-
poms or other dangling elements are sometimes attached
to the edges.6
Embroidered motifs rather like those of the San Sebastiin
hairbands are found on a large su 't, said to be a wedding
perraje, or shawl (back cover). The spontaneous, seem-
ingly airborne shapes - a skirted figure amid flowers
and leaf-like forms - bridge the contrast between the
bold red and white cotton stripes at the outer edges of
the square and the subtle silk ones in yellow, purple, and
pale blue green that form a cross at the center. This piece
is unusually wide for a backstrap-loom woven textile, the
width of which seldom exceeds the span of a woman's
arm.
The diversely patterned textiles attributed to Samayac
range from a deceptively simple plaid in red, blue, and
yellow to the dense shag of supplementary-weft loops
that completely hides the white ground of a basket cloth.
Two extraordinary capes, which were probably woven
for a large figure of the Virgin, are related in their use of
color and stripes; both were made by seaming together
two loom widths, and both use the chevron as a motif,
but very differently. On the cape in the Nasher Collection
(front cover), a slender version of the chevron was shaped
by extra, or supplementary, wefts added during the
weaving process (brocading); the chevron is repeated in
horizontal rows that are contiguous and aligned so that
the motif can also be read as a shimmering vertical zigzag.
The open chevrons of the Williams cape were embroi-
dered on the textile after it was woven; repeated along
widely spaced vertical lines, they suggest leaves on a plant.
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Robbins, Carol. Coastal Color: Textiles from Guatemala's Pacific Foothills [Catalog], text, 1987; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth225063/m1/4/: accessed July 11, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Dallas Museum of Art.