Like other arts and handicraft, such as pottery and jewelry, the costumes of Palestine reflect the diversity in its people and their ways of living. Traditional costumes are the handcrafted costumes of villagers and semi-nomadic bedouins. Men’s dress has become famous as a symbol of Palestinian resistance, particularly the white and black kaffiyah. But women’s dresses are much more colorful, and while still worn on a daily basis by some villagers, they were also made for special occasions such as weddings. Most characteristic are the dresses of women villagers in hilly and coastal regions. There were more than 800 inhabited villages in Palestine in 1948. Despite the similarities, each region or cluster of villages had its distinct uses of color, pattern and structure. The basic cloth is made of natural materials: cotton, linen, wool or silk. Until the 1930s, when cotton thread became popular, village embroidery was usually done in floss silk, which was twisted into threads of required thickness. Before the advent of chemical dyes, the most typical colors of thread were shades of red. Embroidery is a language. The earliest Palestinian embroidery combines geometric patterns with some motifs such as flowers and trees. Later, these patterns were supplemented by more motifs, birds, animals, but few human figures. Every embroidery pattern, like every stitch, has a name. Patterns are usually named after things in the natural surrounding. Palms and cypresses are associated with the tree of life that goes back thousands of years. Some patterns have historical and political meanings, such as khiyam al-basha (tents of the Pasha) or, more recently, the Intifada and other nationalistic themes.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 03:02:05 +0000
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