Taiwan Indigenous News
Tuesday, 25 October 2005
Female head of the national park system seeks to improve parks
... She said she could sense the wisdom of the mountain forests as passed down throughout the ages by Taiwan's indigenous peoples. The ...
Hsieh reveals moves to help indigenous students
... crystal display television to the students at an elementary school in Taitung County and announced more measures to help Taiwan's indigenous children secure ...
Tribe wants official recognition
... "Taiwan's indigenous tribes are all unique minorities in this country, but we are all the original residents of the island. Every ...
The Puyuma are renowned for their unique woven clothes that feature a wide variety of colorful patterns. A typical village has a special building where women weave and make clothes, and since this work is the exclusive domain of female members of the tribe, men are not allowed to enter this place.
The Puyamas’ main weaving material is ramie (also known as “china grass” or “rhea”). The skin is peeled from the stalks with pointed bamboo splinters. Then it is subjected to a process of repeated cleansing and drying to rid the gum from the fibers. When the fibers finally have the right consistency (soft and pliable), they are spun into yarn for weaving.
Puyuma women have honed their embroidery skills to something close to perfection. The most common technique is the cross-stitch, and the single best-known and most typical motif are highly stylized patterns of dancing figures, unique among Taiwan’s aborigines.
Threads of many different colors are used for cross-stitch embroidery, which is usually worked on black cotton cloth. Generally, the colors red, black and purple tend to dominate the neatly stitched designs, which are frequently combinations of elegant two-way and four-way symmetric patterns of flowers or rhombic and triangular shapes.
Some forty or fifty years ago, a new type of garment was invented by Puyuma dressmakers: a kind of sleeveless vest that now serves as formal attire. As with more traditional clothes, the basic color is black, helping to set off the geometrical and floral patterns covering the entire garment. The material is particularly soft and easy to work on. Today, Puyuma embroidery is among the most renowned contributions made to fashion by Taiwan’s indigenous peoples. The tidy and precise execution of the stitchwork is all the more amazing when you consider that it is all done without the help of a taboret (embroidery frame).
Colored woven fabrics have become a staple of Puyuma fashion in modern times. In addition to plain black cloth, interwoven fabrics created with a wide variety of colored threads are now common. This adds a whole new range of styles and decorative possibilities, as do the studs and beads that are frequently combined with the more traditional forms of embroidery.
Most of the interwoven colored patterns are rhombic (the most characteristic decorative design in traditional Puyuma weaving), while the borders may also display triangular, serrated, striped or checkered designs.