Next to the large gallery exhibition on Yemeni clothing and jewellery, which was opened on Monday 17th August, the TRC has also mounted a mini exhibition of some embroidered garments from the Karen people in Myanmar (Burma) and neighbouring Thailand. The Karen are an ethnic group of some seven million people. Traditionally Karen women spun, dyed and wove their families’ clothes, shoulder bags and blankets, from cotton, on backstrap looms. Red, blue and black were the most common colours for both men’s and women’s clothing. Men wore undecorated tunics with fringes, while women wore tunics decorated with Job’s Tears seeds and coloured threads, and a sarong. Both men and women might wear a turban and carry a colourful shoulder bag. Women would also wear silver bracelets and necklaces made from beads of Job’s Tears. Women’s sarongs often had woven patterns of vertical or horizontal stripes, diamonds and zigzags. Tunics were embroidered with these and other geometrical patterns.
Two Karen garments. The embroidered black tunic to the left is also decorated with Job's TearsToday factory manufactured T-shirts, trousers and sarongs have largely replaced traditional clothing, except for special occasions such as New Year ceremonies or weddings, when traditional dress is still worn. Labour intensive skills such as spinning and weaving are dying out. In the last few decades, however, hand weaving has made a small come-back among some Karen women. In the early 1990s non-governmental groups like Women’s Education for Advancement and Empowerment (WEAVE, Chiang Mai, Thailand) began to work with some of the estimated 100000 Karen refugees along the Thai-Burmese border. Women’s income-generating projects were started. Scarves, clothes, bags, pillow cases, dolls and cards, made from hand-woven materials, are now produced by refugee women and marketed for both Thai and Western tastes. Materials may be made from cotton or rayon and colours may be more subdued, especially for the Western market. Traditional motifs and materials, like Job’s Tears, are used for decoration, in addition to newer techniques, such as cross stitch, which can be used to quickly decorate cards or other items for sale. Proceeds from this work mean that many women can now support their families.
What are Job’s Tears? (from Needles, the TRC’s on-line Encyclopaedia of Decorative Needlework) Job's Tears is a tall, grain-bearing plant of the family Poaceae (grass family), a native of Southeast Asia. The seeds of this plant are used as a form of applied decoration. The plant flowers from July to October with the accessor fruit (pseudocarps) ripening from September to November. The plant is generally known as Job’s Tears after its seeds. The term comes from the Old Testament book of Job (16:20: 'Mine eye poureth out tears unto God.'). It is also known as David’s Tears (after the Biblical King David), Saint Mary’s Tears and Christ’s Tears (Lacryma Christi). There are two main varieties of the species: a cultivated type (Coix lacryma-jobi), which is harvested as a cereal crop and the wild variety, Coix lacryma-jobi var. stenocarpa and var. Monilifer, which produces hard-shelled, pearly white, oval assessor fruit. These are often used as beads and sewn onto textiles.
The use of Job’s Tears as an applied form of decoration can be found, among other places, in India, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. It was introduced at some point into the southern United States and to various tropical regions. For several centuries, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma have used beads of Job’s Tears as personal ornamentation. These are known as corn beads or Cherokee corn beads.
Shelley Anderson, curator
