Woman’s long tunic (khreng tan)

Textiles represent the most important artistic production of the various Chin communities that inhabit areas of Burma, India, and Bangladesh. Textiles reflect status and wealth of the wearer and are important items of exchange, whether through marriage price, gift-giving, the hosting of merit feasts, or trade. Women weave textiles of local cotton, or silk gained through trade, and dye the yarns using local and imported dyes. Using simple back-strap body-tension looms, the various Chin groups achieve complex, distinctive patterns using weft-faced or warp-faced weaves with supplementary wefts and, in some traditions, so-called “false embroidery.”