Costumes of the World - Myanmar

These original, hand drawn illustrations are from my Costumes of the World collection and depict aspects of the traditional Myanmarese dress for men and women.
 
The traditional dress of Myanmar is said to date back to the 1750s when it was first designed to be worn in the Konbaung court. Though there is great variety of design across the country, the most common costume is the longyi (လုံချည်), an ankle-length wraparound skirt worn by both men and women. Men wear a Manchu Chinese jacket called a taikpon eingyi (တိုက်ပုံအင်္ကျီ) over an English collar shirt and women wear blouses called eingyi (အင်္ကျီ). The woman in this illustration wears her eingyi in the yinbon (ရင်ဖုံး) style, buttoned at the side.
 
The indigenous Burmese textile pattern is called acheik (အချိတ်) or luntaya acheik (လွန်းတစ်ရာအချိတ်) and features intricate waves interwoven with bands of horizontal stripes, embellished with arabesque designs. Luntaya (လွန်းတစ်ရာ) literally means a "hundred shuttles," and refers to the time-consuming, expensive, and complex process of weaving this pattern, which requires using 50 to 200 individual shuttles, each wound with a different colour of silk. The weaving is extremely labour-intensive and requires at least two weavers to manipulate the shuttles to achieve the interwoven wave-like patterns.
 
You can read more about traditional Myanmarese dress here and here.
 
Sizes available:
A5 / 210 x 148mm
A4 / 297 x 210mm

All open editions, signed in pencil.

Ready to be mounted and framed, each print is posted with a protective greyboard backing in a bio-degradable sleeve, and in a hard-backed envelope.