The indigenous Maya peoples of Mexico and Central America have textile traditions stretching back millennia. These textile-making practices connect generations of families and communities through highly skilled processes of weaving, dyeing, brocading, and embroidery. The resulting textiles express a multitude of designs that help to identify Maya personhood, family, and … [Read more...] about Textiles of the Highland Maya Cultures of Guatemala by Julia Kidwell
This “coctelera,” or cocktail napkin, is a miniature tourist-trade object, but it is nevertheless a good example of traditional Maya woven and embroidered textiles. This small panel of cloth was likely woven on a typical Maya backstrap loom, with a tapestry weave of stripes in yellow, black, red, and white thread; combinations of the thread colors create … [Read more...] about Hand-Woven and Embroidered Maya Textiles by Bao Nguyen
Contemporary Maya cultures in Guatemala produce elaborate textiles using traditional methods for spinning, dying, weaving, and embroidering cloth that have been passed down by the women of their cultures for centuries. Each Maya region is known for its own version of colorful traditional clothing outfits, called trajes. While women in more rural areas continue to wear the traje … [Read more...] about Traditional Maya 20th-century Clothing: Researched by Vinita Williams
This small textile is a sample of traditional Maya weaving, possibly serving as a napkin or just as a sampler. Maya textiles are more typically created as large pieces of fabric, intended to be made into traditional clothing, that are hand-woven on a backstrap loom. This piece is striped in different colors of traditionally hand-dyed cotton, but because of global trade, today … [Read more...] about Maya Hand-Woven Textiles: Researched by Abigail Morrow
The indigenous cultures of ancient Mesoamerica created a variety of highly sophisticated sculptures in different styles and materials, both as reliefs and as sculptures in-the-round. Many of these sculptures represent their religious beliefs, embodying the Mesoamerican pantheon of gods, while others depict the elite members of the nobility. Later Mestizo (mixed Hispanic and … [Read more...] about Images of Mesoamerican Elites and Deities in Reproduction: Researched by Whitney Mosley