Indian Trade Cloth with Daun Bolu motif

Gujarat, India, for the Toraja Market
16th- 17th Century
Cotton; hand painted and stamped resist, mordant applied, dyed red, painted resist, dyed blue
37 x 204 in (94 x 518 cm)

One of the rarest and most important cotton Indian trade cloths, considered sacred by the Toraja people and given the name maá. It features a pattern known as Daun Bolu in the Toraja language, referring to the leaf from a pepper plant used in chewing sirih (betel nut) by the mountain people of highland Sulawesi. The leaf motif was first located in Egypt at the Fustat archeology site from the 15th Century.