CIRCA: early 1900’s
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The kira is a traditional Bhutanese garment worn by women which is made from three lengths of cloth woven on a backstrap loom and then stitched together to create a rectangular panel. They are worn wrapped around the body, pinned at each shoulder with a brooch and secured at the waist with a wide woven belt. There are many different styles of kira, this style features richly decorated double sided brocade work and is known as aikapur, and the ones with yellow on red ground are the characteristic of the type known as a mensi mattah. The weaving technique used for these pieces differs from the method used for the ‘regular’ kira in that they are made using a supplementary warp floating technique which forms bands of repeated motifs on plain ground. In this technique the supplementary warp threads together with the ground create the same pattern on both sides of the textile, but with the colour areas reversed (see front and back images of same area on left side above).