Vintage Dogon,Mali Wedding Skirt/Indigo Strips/Colorful Embroidery/42”x60"

Description

Beautiful, vintage, hard to find, wedding skirt/wrapper made by the Dogon in Mali. Piece has 9 medium-heavier weight indigo dyed, cotton hand woven strips, stitch dyed with a lace-like and rectangle design, sewn together and hand embroidered with colorful, intricate abstract yarn figures in the center and abstract end design that could also represent Dogon tents. Yarn fringe. Center design shows two figures, a star, and a bird.
Most wedding cloths were embroidered on older, favorite indigos formerly worn by the mother or some close relative, and then given to the bride. 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 the mosque at Timbuktu; and this 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 wonderful, and wish I could keep every one!
42” x 60”;
Very good-excellent condition: Embroidery is tight and complete with only a few small threads that can easily be pulled through to the back; there is one patch under the bird’s embroidery which can’t be seen from the front; one “lace” seam which is coming apart with attempts at resewing it; another sewn tear and hole, but none of the probleam are enough to distract from this fun, great work!
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. All were used and are soft from wear and washing.
I was lucky to have “first choice” of many 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.
(7976)
_gsrx_vers_837 (GS 7.0.15 (837))