Lower band of a woman’s skirt. Bands of coloured warp, in red, black, blue, and salmon, with continuous and discontinuous weft based patterns in blue, yellow, red, and white. Patterns include zig-zags in the border bands, lozenges in the black bands, and groups of four small squares sometimes enclosed by lozenges in the broad main red band. Paper label sewn on:
Stamped at top `LAKHER PIONEER MISSION’, and handwritten in blue: `The bottom fancy band of a woman’s skirt, woven on a primitive hand loom’.
Lakher is the name given to the people by outsiders: they are known to themselves as the Mara (see N.E.Parry 1932 The Lakhers London: Macmillan). See illustration of `Woman’s skirt, Mara’ in Fraser, D.W. & Fraser, B.G. 2005 Mantles of Merit: Chin textiles from Myanmar, India and Bangladesh Bangkok: River Books, p129 This collection associated with the Lakher Pioneer Mission set up by Rev R.A. Lorrain with his wife Maud in 1907. The mission was supported by Lorrain’s home church in Penge. The mission is now the Mara Independent Evangelical Church.
