ARTESANIA TEXTIL: ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF EMBROIDERY SHAWL


What will have this article to be a principal star in the universe that surrounds to us!. It arrived in silence, it does already more than two hundred years, of the distant east, reconverted of ancestral Chinese dress. It arrived in silence, with the humility of just arrived, becoming a hollow, little by little, in the feminine surroundings of the fashion.

Embroidery shawl receives its name of Latin word "MANTUN" and the last name, of the city by which they passed in transit all products made in China and to the Iberian Peninsula. Manila, capital of the Philippines, by that time Spanish colony, towards of connection between the metropolis and the manufacturers of shawls of silk.

These shawls, in the beginning, they are small and with very simple embroidery and fringes.
The drawings are of Eastern taste (chrysanthemums, dragoons, scenes of daily life, etc.). Little by little, shawls is become more complicated and the influence of the western tastes is reflected in the new designs. The flowers of our fields replace the Chinese, birds and butterflies appear in shawls that they are complied to our pleasures.

Also the fringes begin to be longer and with more and more wide gratings. When finishing in century XIX, Spain loses its colonies, but this does not affect in fashion in anything feminine; in fact, shawl lives its moment on glory, it grows in size and embroidering, great flowers cover it completely and fringes is luxurious. In the new century, the success continues and great artists immortalize over and over again to cabaret singer covered (or little covers) with precious shawls. But the wars arrive and the joy disappears and with her also these magnificent articles disappear.

It spends the time (long time), and some eccentric lady extraction of the trunk an old one and old shawl, smelling of naphthalene and after letting air it in the patio of its house, is placed it to go to the fair, or to a wedding, or it hangs it in its balcony to the passage of the "Corpus".

And some other lady, equal of eccentric it imitates it, and another one, and another one......
And the cycle renews, little by little; it returns the success.
Famous designers use them for their dresses of high seam and they have even turned them boxes of chocolates.
Now, everybody loves them in Spain, in all Europe and although it seems lie, also in Japan (returned to its origins?).

 


Juan Casas Ventura