Textile - 27 cm - 22 cm - Miao-embroidered panel, China

Embroidered baby-carrier panel, Miao people, Guizhou province, China

This textile panel, 22 by 27 cm, is embroidered with vibrant silk threads—red, blue, violet, and turquoise—on a tightly woven black cotton background, following a set of concentric borders surrounding a central motif in the shape of a stylized cross with hooks, a composition strictly symmetrical and typical of textile art by the minority groups of southwest China. The successive borders alternate geometric sawtooth motifs, chevrons, and hooked Greek keys; the whole is executed in an extremely dense counted and applied embroidery technique, leaving almost nothing of the background visible. The reverse of the panel is made of indigo-dyed cotton woven with fine light and dark stripes, characteristic of village textile production in the region, with the embroidered panel having been attached and sewn onto this lining.

This piece corresponds to the well-documented type of baby-carrier panels used by the Miao people, and, to a lesser extent, the Dong, in Guizhou province in southwestern China. This richly embroidered square or rectangular panel formed the central and most refined element of a broader device—the traditional baby carrier—in which the child was carried on the mother's back, secured by long fabric strips tied around the waist and shoulders.

Among the Miao, whose material culture rests on wholly oral and artisanal transmission due to the historical lack of widespread writing, weaving, indigo dyeing, batik with wax, and embroidery constitute the principal vectors of collective memory. Geometric motifs and spirals traditionally carried protective meanings intended to ward off malevolent spirits from the carried child. The making of such a panel, which could take several months, was a know-how transmitted from mother to daughter from an early age, and the finished baby carrier often served as a gift given on the birth of a child or the mother’s marriage.

Excellent condition.