exti e reasuresfromthe

American Museum of Natural History Selected by Mary Lou Murillo '09

By Tracy Jenkins, MA Fashion and Textile Studies:

History, Theory, Museum Practice '12

The American Museum of Natural History is among the most venerable scientific and cultural institutions in the world. Its 32 million objects-essential to the study of the universe, nature, and human culture-are researched, catalogued, stored, and preserved by experts, such as the museum's scientific assistant for textiles, Mary Lou Murillo, MA Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice '09. Murillo works in the anthropology division, where she's in charge of 13,500 textiles found all over the world in clothing, accessories, and domestic goods. "I get to see a huge range of techniques and materials, and ways that people solve basic problems of how to attire themselves, or decorate," she says. "There's so much variety here."

An anthropology collection contains not only "masterpieces," the finest examples

of a culture or technique that stand alone on their aesthetic merits (though the museum

has many such works). Every possible object, from the everyday to the exceptional, is

collected and documented. Tools, unfinished pieces, and researchers' field notes are

among the approximately 400 catalogue records added each year. New objects must fill

in a gap or enhance a collection, and tell a story about the way people live. Textiles are

categorized as ethnographic (collected from living peoples) or archaeological (made

by ancient peoples and excavated).

Murillo helps find the best ways to store and retrieve objects, maintains catalogue

records, and cleans the pieces and the spaces in which they're housed. She also assists

researchers who come to study the collection. Sometimes she witnesses epiphanies. For

example, a curator descended from the A'aninin tribe of the Plains Indians was studying

a muslin tipi liner that depicts the tribe's greatest warriors and their brave deeds in battle.

The curator realized he'd seen a key that an anthropologist had created to explain the

liner's imagery at a museum in Berlin. The curator not only reunited the liner with its

key, but was able to identify his great-great-grandfather in several scenes.

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Indigenous artists work with the collection,

too. In her first months on the job, Murillo met a

Colombian artist who came to study the museum's

chumbe, woven belts worn by Inga women, and

compare them to belts by native peoples of the

Peruvian and Bolivian Andes. By observing the

chumbe firsthand, the artist was able to bring

knowledge of old weaving techniques and symbols

back to his community.

On the following pages, Hue presents five

highlights from the collection, selected by Murillo.

Catalogue number 70/2280

Man's Summer Coat (Shanghai, China) Date: l850-75A.D-

This robe features dragons in metallic couch work,

an elaborate and time-consuming method of

embroidery that incorporates costly gold and silver.

Gilt paper is wrapped around a cotton core to make

threads that are secured, or "couched" to the fabric

with small stitches at regular intervals. Collected in

1901, the robe dates from 1850-75, placing it during

China's final dynasty, the Qing. These dates and its

luxurious materials and construction all authenti-

cate it as a court garment, unlike less ornate copies

made for the marketplace. The influence of China's

Manchu conquerors can be seen in stylistic changes

to the shape of the robe. "The contour of the collar

and the way it overlaps from left to right echo the

shape of the hide garments of the Manchu horsemen,"

Murillo says. "Manchu influence is also apparent in

the horse-hoof-shaped cuffs, designed to help protect

the ungloved hands of riders on the windy steppes."

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Catalogue number L,1 .2/860L,

Tunic (Wari, Peru) Date: 600-lOOOA.D.

How have 1 ,500-year-old textiles survived to the

present day? In the case of this Wari tunic (detail,

right), geography and luck. The Wari people were

found chiefly in the highlands of Peru, but most of

their textiles survive because they were brought

down to coastal burials, where the semi-arid climate

provided pre-modern preservation. The museum's

collection of archaeological textiles is predomi­

nately pre-Columbian and Andean, largely for this

reason. Tunics like this one, a standardized elite

garment, are thought to have been woven on

short, wide looms, although no such looms survive.

This is because of the unusual direction of the warp

threads: horizontal rather than vertical. (Warp

threads are held in tension on a loom and usually

run vertically; weft threads are woven over and

under warps.) "Lazy" lines, or subtle variations in

the weave, indicate that multiple hands probably

worked on a single piece, much easier to do on a

loom that was wider than it was tall. Fibers of cotton

warp and animal-hair weft are woven in extra­

ordinarily fine interlock tapestry. A single tunic

comprises an average of s~~x to nine miles of thread.

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Catalogue number: 50.2/6706

Child's Pictorial Blanket (Navajo, New Mexico, USA) Date:l880s

The AMNH has a large collectiqn of Navajo

blankets, but this traditionally woven child's

blanket from the 1880s has an atypical motif:

trains. "Navajo weavers witnessing changes to

the world around them, such as the transconti­

nental railroad, incorporated these themes

into their textiles," Murillo says. The railroad, .

an emblem of industrialization, is paired here ·

with the traditional Navajo symbol of the thun­

derbird. A unique construction detail makes

this blanket unmistakably Navajo: its edge, or

selvage, has a distinctive pattern of small dia­

gonal white stripes (far left). These are warp

threads, normally unseen, but visible because

Navajo weavers twist their warp threads at the

selvage approximately every quarter inch.

Catalogue number: 90.2/9922

Wax-resist fabric (Dutch) Date: contemporary

This recent acquisition adds to the history of Dutch

wax-resist fabric. In the 19th century, Dutch merchants

traveled and traded along the West African coast on

their way to the Dutch Indies. In the mid-1800s, they

began to trade and produce Javanese-style batik, or wax

cloth, initially deemed a failure because the Indonesians

would not buy the Dutch-made versions. When they

docked in Africa, however, the Dutch discovered that the

cloth appealed to West Africans, for whom it quickly

became the height of fashion. By the early 1900s, Dutch

manufacturers were producing "African-style" Javanese­

inspired wax cloth for this new market. Vlisco, the firm

that manufactured this piece, is one of the original

companies. Today, discerning West African women forgo

lesser-quality Chinese and Indonesian imitations to

purchase genuine Dutch wax cloth from specialty stores.

The dice print (right) appealed to the museum's curator

for African ethnology, a games specialist and expert on

mancala, a family of board games played around the

world. The cracked pattern in the background was an

imperfection in the early fabrics that appealed to West

African customers, so the Dutch continued to incorporate it.

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Catalogue number 70.1 /5272

Man's Hemp Jacket (Bagobo, Mindanao, Santa Cruz, Philippines) Date: circa 1900 A.D.

The Bagobo of the Philippines have a reputa­

tion among anthropologists as a tribe who

invested almost all of their creative energy

into adorning themselves. Th is jacket of

abaca cloth and cotton is a stunning example

of Bagobo decoration. It features elaborate

glass beadwork, metal sequins, kalati shell disks,

and embroidery. Laura Watson Benedict, the

second woman in the world to receive a PhD

in anthropology, did fieldwork among the

Bagobo in 1906-07. She described how, during

their journeys through the forest to visit neigh­

boring tribes, they kept their best clothes

packed safely in elaborately beaded bags.

Just before they reached their destination,

they changed into their finery and made a

grand entrance. Benedict pioneered ethno­

graphic collecting methods that have evolved

into the present day holistic approach. A

page from her notebook appears at left. •

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