Vintage Dogon,Mali Wedding Skirt/Indigo Strips, Colorful, Intricate Embroidery

Description

Beautiful, vintage, hard to find, wedding skirt/wrapper made by the Dogon in Mali. Piece has 7 medium-heavy weight indigo dyed, cotton hand woven strips sewn together, plus one white and grey strip at the waist, and is hand embroidered in the center and one end with colorful, intricate abstract yarn designs, that have an architectural look to them.
Most wedding cloths were embroidered on older indigos formerly worn by the mother or some close relative, and then given to the bride, and the original wear on the strips can be seen. This piece has the date of “2007” written on a part of the indigo, I assume the wedding date, but the indigo itself looks older, with a nice pattern to it showing age from wear and washing.  I have received many wedding pieces from several shipments, and each village seems to have different designs: One group had works with lettering/words, names of the bride and groom, and different abstract symbols; another had very architectural and abstract overall embroidery, that reminded me of mosques and tents (such as this one); and one group showed stitch dyed indigos, as opposed to solid color ones in the first two groups, along with figures, animals, and various abstract and architectural patterns. All are wondeful, and wish I could keep every one!
37” (+5” for the white strip) x 58”; Textile
and embroidery are in excellent condition: one end hand hemmed; the end with the embroidery has the very bottom yarn loose in a few places, but could easily be
resewn, cut, or pulled to the back; one small area of edge wear and one tear on an outside strip repaired.
All the works I will be listing are
hard to find, older indigo textiles in very good conditon, with the old dyed striped patterns, some in the old stitch and resist patterns, and a  few with embroidered patterns such as the wedding ones.
I was lucky to have “first choice” of several large containers of indigos as they arrived directly from Africa, and have MANY I will be listing. I picked ones that were in the best condition, and/or the most unique, but there are almost always a few flaws, which I will note in my listings and photographs.
(1950)
_gsrx_vers_775 (GS 7.0.3 (775))