Exhibition

Kaleidoscopic Dreamcoats: Central Asian Ikat Robes
Mull Gallery, November 29, 2000 to December 2, 2002
Anne Bissonnette, Curator
  

Woman's Munisak Robe Uzbekistan, possibly from Bukhara c.1860s Warp-faced plain weave silk warp, cotton weft ikat (adras, ishtope, or dagir) Neck to hem: 47½"/120.7 cm Cuff to cuff: 56"/142.2 cm Kent State University Museum, Silverman/Rodgers Collection, KSUM 1983.1.1993. Rare indigo dyed ikat with grayish-white (ground color) and yellow abstracted floral motifs and pink dashes. Underarm gussets in orange/pink and purple/orange adras ikat. Pink, purple and yellow embroidery above side slits. Padded and quilted vertically. Lined in several Russian cotton printed fabrics with stripes as well as floral and boteh (paisley) motifs.

Indigo Ikat Robes

Status and age were indicated by the color of a woman's clothes. Age-appropriate colors included red and pink tones for young women and girls (red symbolized life and fertility for peasants and nomads)(1), darker shades for matrons, and indigo blue for older women (2). Since the robes in a woman's dowry were meant to last throughout her life, a wide array of shades was included, indigo among them. Indigo ikat robes were worn by women of all ages for funerals and, most importantly, they served to cover a woman's bier (3). As the corpse was carried out of the house, the deceased's relatives would turn their own robes inside out, and, on the day of the burial, they would wear dark blue or black mourning robes (4). The importance of these burial customs insured the longevity of indigo mourning robes in Central Asia. * * * (1) Johannes Kalter, ed., Uzbekistan: Heirs to the Silk Road (Thames and Hudson, 1997), 205. (2) Kate Fitz Gibbon, "Ikat: Costume in Central Asia," Ornament 21, (Fall/ Summer 1997-1998): 59. Kate Fitz Gibbon and Andrew Hale, Ikat: Splendid Silks of Central Asia: the Guido Goldman Collection (Lawrence King Publishing in association with Alan Marcuson Publishing, 1999), 122. (3) Kalter, 226. Gibbon, 59. (4) Gibbon, 59.