DepartmentTextiles-Middle East
Thobe
NameDress
Artist
Artist unrecorded
Dateca. 1925
Place madeHistoric Palestine, Middle East or West Asia, Asia
Mediumlinen, silk, velour, metallic rickrack
Dimensionsoverall: 1 M 36 CM X 1 M 33 CM (SLEEVE TIP TO SLEEVE TIP)
Credit LineIFAF Collection
Object numberFA.1972.25.10
Collections
FA. 72.25-10 Thõb (ca. 1925) Although this wedding or festival dress is from Samaria, all of its elements, including the fabric, are from somewhere else. The cloth is basically a poor quality linen. This particular fabric was woven in Majdal in the Southwest Coastal Plain and is known as janna wa-nār (“Heaven and Hell”). It is characterized by the colored stripes made of a combination of linen and silk. The background of the dress is white. The wide vertical stripes which run parallel on either side of the front and back and horizontally across the hip at the sides and back are green for the Garden of Paradise and red for the fires of Hell. There are also pen lines in black and yellow running through these stripes. (This and similar fabrics are discussed in the section dealing with the Southwest Coastal Plain.) The yoke base is deep blue velour with metallic and silk embroidery. Embroidered panels in the Bethlehem style have been stitched onto the chest, upper sleeves, and the sides of the skirt. Much of the embroidery on the long, narrow sleeves has worn away. Metallic rickrack is machine-stitched around the chest panel. Length: 133 cm. Width: 73.5 cm. (Palestinian Costume and Jewelry, Yedida Kalfon Stillman, 1979 ISBN: 0-82630490-7)
