Textile

Despite its unusual lime green, orange, and gray color scheme, this printed rayon dress fabric takes its influence from the striking black and white pottery produced by the Mimbres people of southwest New Mexico. The Mimbres occupied the Mimbres river valley and surrounding mountains from about 1000 to 1250 AD, but the area was somewhat ignored by archaeologists due to the archaeological richness of the nearby Pueblo settlements. The earliest classification of the designs painted on their exquisite pottery was published by Jesse Walter Fewkes (1850-1930) in Designs on Prehistoric Pottery from the Mimbres Valley, New Mexico in 1923. Fewkes’ excavations in the valley and subsequent publications first drew attention to the artifacts of the Mimbres Valley, especially the pottery, which is decorated with fantastical, attenuated animal and human forms, often combined with or incorporating geometric patterning. The artifacts that Fewkes collected are now in the collection of Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

Textile; acetate; H x W: 209.6 × 106.7 cm (6 ft. 10 1/2 in. × 42 in.); American Textile History Museum Collection, museum purchase through gift of Brenda Herbaugh; 2016-35-94