Shroud

MVW29556

Northern Luzon, rancheria Banaue ?* See note below

Cotton

105 x 82 cm

Schadenberg; before 1888 Alexander Schadenberg (1851-1896) was a chemist and ethnographer, and a natural history enthusiast. Born in Breslau, Germany, he studied chemistry and botany. After receiving his Ph.D., he worked as the assistant director of the Potassic Salt Works in Stassfurt. In 1876, he went to worked as a chemist for the drug company Pablo Sartorius in Manila and in 1879, illness forced him to move back to Breslau. From 1881 to 1883, Schadenberg and his friend Otto Koch visited southern Mindanao to carry out ethnographic and linguistic studies, basing themselves in the Bagobo village of Sibulan. There, they also made ethnographic and natural history collections. Upon their return to Germany Schadenberg spent several years working on his collections, publishing, lecturing and corresponding with museums and anthropological societies throughout Europe. Schadenberg later returned to the Philippines and became a partner of Pablo Sartorius. He settled with his family in Vigan in 1885 and continued his excursions among the native people of the islands. After Schadenberg's death in 1896, his collections passed to several museums in Dresden, Vienna, Berlin, and Leiden.

before 1888

*According to Schadenberg, this specimen is from the rancheria Banaue. Assuming this indicates Ifugao origin might be misleading, however. The documentation available for comparable pieces listed in the literature does not suggest that Ifugao actually dressed their dead in shrouds - corpses were rather covered with loincloth and blankets. However, Kron Steinhardt (1991) describes similar shrouds in use among the Kankanay and Bontok. Her example from the Kankanay ( 48, ill. 2.1-1.3) is from Luput at the Monte Data, not far from Banaue (see map, 42); made from a hemp and cotton mix, it has blue, black, and red warp stripes and is cut in a very similar way as the Viennese shroud. She claims that the shrouds found among Bontok were " [ ... ] traded in from the lowlands, potentially from San Jose Ilocos Sur" (1) (585). The cut of these shrouds is similar as in the specimen presented here, but the colors and the ikat patterns differ. (Ursula Brandl-Straka 2009: 82)



(1) German original:"[ ... ] wurden aus dem Tiefland erhandelt, moglicherweise aus San Jose Ilocos Sur."

Not on display

The Philippines: Museum of Ethnology, Vienna : Early Collections. Vienna: Museum für Volkerkünde, 2009. Print.

Kron-Steinhardt ,Christiane. 1991 Textilien und Weberei der Bergbewohner Luzons Indizien einer handelsintensiven, jungen Vergangenheit · Volume 1.

Translated from German by Google Translate Record accessed March 2021

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