1983.106 Woman's tubular garment (tais feto)

Tubular skirts are worn with the top edge folded over to the waist or below. For this reason, the upper and lower areas of the cloth are the focus of the design. This skirt is embellished with stylized skeins of thread alternating with protective lizards. The raised figures are the result of a deft and painstaking process that requires colorful and costly supplementary silk weft (transverse) threads to be wound around collected strands of warp yarns (which run perpendicular to the weft yarns). The weaver probably spent several months completing this cloth, which would have been owned by the king's wife and worn during ritual ceremonies and festivals.

Roslyn A. Walker, Label text, 2016.

Until 1983: Steven G. Alpert, Dallas, Texas, purchased from Go Tjin Liong, Kupang, Indonesia [1]

1983: Dallas Museum of Art, purchased from above [2]

Notes:

The main source for this provenance is the Pacific American Corp. document titled "Dallas Museum of Art: The Steven G. Alpert Collection of Indonesian Textiles" in the Collections Records file labeled Steven G. Alpert—Indonesian Textiles. Exceptions and other supporting documents are noted.

[1] This piece was collected from either the royal household of Faheluka or Besikama

[2] See pages 1-4 of the correspondence between Harry S. Parker and Pacific American Corp. dated October 5, 1983, in the Collections Records file labeled Steven G. Alpert—Indonesian Textiles.

Apply to objects where number equals 1983.106