Thursday 2 April 2020

B is for.... Buttons ...n... Bijoux ...




It doesn't matter if you follow the lyrics or not, you'll understand the title once you listen. :) Here's Breathless from singer composer Shankar Mahadevan -




And this is a track called Bawra by Naalayak. I suppose I should have given some space to Bollywood here, but I am not so fond of the current filmy music...sorry!  Besides which, Indian music or even films do not equal only Bollywood, as the bigwigs of Bombay film industry would lead you to believe. India has 22 official languages in which songs have been sung for centuries...



And this one is oldies goldies Barandaye Roddur by Bhoomi...an indie band from Bengal.

  




Buttons, buttons...



Buttons in plastic, wood and metal from the stash.
The oldest  button in the world  is from the Indus Valley Civilisation, the foremother of modern India. It is made out of curved shell, made to fit into a loop, dated at 5000 years old and has been located in Mohenjodaro in modern day Pakistan. Early buttons were more a decoration than a fastening though. Made from horn, bone, shell and later metal, they were meant as accents and flourishes rather than the functional use we know them for today. Buttons are pretty much useless unless there is something with which to fix them onto garments. So - at an IVC site in modern day Gujarat called Pabumath, needles have been discovered. Stands to reason, right?


Garment samples from IVC have not been found, but there is ample evidence to show that the ancient Indians were nifty dressers. Figurines show that they used locally grown cotton to weave fabric and wore it in a variety of ways. Woollen textiles were probably obtained through trade with Mesopotamia. 

Men wore a long piece of cloth wrapped around the waist covering up to the ankle, while women wore a shorter skirt length garment above the knees. Turbans were also commonly worn among affluent men.  The richie rich wore long robes covering their shoulders.

Credit
Have a peek at this figurine of a 'priest-king' dated to about 2200-1900 BCE. He is wearing a robe over his left shoulder with a fairly elaborate printed pattern, evidence that the ancient Indians dyed and printed their textiles in a range of colours/patterns. Remnants of madder dyed textile also reinforce this further.

Similarly, a figurine of the mother-goddess shows that feminine apparel consisted of tops and trousers, with accessories like waistbands and scarves/shawls.  Women also wore long skirt like garments, and short stitched tunics on the upper body to go with them, an ancient version of the kurti-lahanga or ghagra-choli worn in parts of Northern India today. 

Both men and women wore a tonne of jewellery. Women's earrings were heavy, bangles were worn both on the upper arm as well as forearm, anklets, rings, necklaces recovered show openings where gemstones might have been set. Elaborate pectorals and hair ornaments were also worn. Both men and women wore their hair long, in various styles of buns and braids. Men trimmed their beards.  Jewellery consisted of not just precious metals - gold and silver, but also of copper. Beads were in common use for ornamentation. 


The clothing and jewellery worn in ancient India were as diverse as the population, which was thought to be multi-ethnic. Although there are theories that the ancient Indians wore only unstitched garments and stitched clothing was unknown in the subcontinent till the first Muslim invasion in the 10-11th centuries. This has however, proven to be false and a combination of both stitched and unstitched apparel were more likely. In any case, the needle and the scissors would have been brought to the extreme north-west of the subcontinent with the coming of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BCE, nearly a thousand years before the Muslims landed up.  

In short folks, fashion was as important to the ancient peoples as it is today!


What is the oldest garment style/item where you come from? How has it changed in modern times?


And among all the blogs I visited yesterday, these two here just blew me away - Quilting Patchwork Applique, The Old Shelter. Brava! 






33 comments:

  1. How I love visiting your posts. I learn, I marvel, I wander off with thoughts to ponder, things to explore.
    Bravo - and many thanks.

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    1. The A-Z is a nifty learning exercise for me as well, both reading and writing. That's its main attraction.

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  2. LOL! Indeed!
    Fascinated post. I was particularly interested in the history of bottons, since it's one of those detail you never think about. And I think true history is hidden in the details.

    @JazzFeathers
    The Old Shelter - Living the Twenties

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    1. Agree totally - history is in the details, and the more insignificant those details are the more astounding the history.

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  3. Hari OM
    What a lovely meander through fashion - via a button! In OZ, of course, the garments were merely loincloths fashioned from bark - if worn at all. Here in the UK, clasps, buttons and buckles are often all that is left to mark the fashion of our earliest peoples and they tend to date anything from 1500 to 3000 years back... but generally very finely worked, indicating not just craftmanship, but a real sense of aesthetics and individualism. YAM xx

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    1. The fashion sense of people 3000 years ago was as complex and quirky and wonderful as it is now, and people were as willing to take any amount of trouble to be fashionably spruce.

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  4. I have to admit I have no idea about clothes from history in the UK - other than the Tudors going in for the most outrageous ruffs and skirts. All I do know is that bright colours were for the rich because they were very expensive to do, and wool was an important commodity.
    When I was a child I used to love buttons - my mother had a tin which was full of them. Used to love sorting them into different types.
    Tasha 💖
    Virginia's Parlour - The Manor (Adult concepts - nothing explicit in posts)
    Tasha's Thinkings - Vampire Drabbles

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    1. I love the Tudors' sense of fashion - flamboyant and colourful! and lace to die for! :)

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  5. One of the earliest clothes in Japan may have been simple type of clothing consisting of a large piece of cloth (or animal skin) with a hole in the middle for the head.

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    1. That sounds exactly like the first baby dress I was forced into making in needlework class when I was 12/13...

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  6. Buttons are a whole fascinating niche of archaeology :D
    Not the oldest, but my favorite is Sarmatian fashion from what is now Hungary. Sarmatians loved beading their clothes, wore lots of beads as jewelry, and scavenged things from other cultures such as Roman coins or flint arrowheads they dug up, and added them to their dress. Magpie people :D

    The Multicolored Diary

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    1. Oh I like magpie people! I'd probably be one myself given half a chance :)

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  7. I love buttons, as they are very used inembellishments: on quilts, or on clothes. I have jars full of them ;)
    Quilting Patchwork & Appliqué

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    1. I can imagine :) hoping to see some lovely ones in your posts down the line

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  8. a jar of buttons are fun to look at and then touch. Gorgeous little pieces of art. I assumed the ancient folks would have had lovely clothes - look at the colors and needlework now.

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    1. They are truly little artworks in themselves. Netsuke come to mind.

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  9. You took me back to school. The history lessons...That bit about buttons is rather interesting and I must add we've danced like crazy on breathless!

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    1. Breathless was and remains a favourite, it's beautiful! I hope the trip back to school was pleasant :)

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  10. Though I've always preferred simple, casual clothes and don't follow modern fashion trends, I love reading about fashion history. It's fun to see what kinds of clothing people in bygone eras wore. If I ever marry, I'd have non-flower bouquets including button bouquets. It would be great if I could find some Elsa Schiaparelli buttons to use, since she had such fun, unique shapes and designs.

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    1. Button bouquets would look absolutely beautiful! In India, it is a custom to present a set of gold/diamond buttons as a wedding gift to the bridegroom from the bride's family.

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  11. The history section of your posts are really insightful. And so is the music, I'm actually getting tempted to recommend some songs...check out Baanware by Shuja Haider and Aima Baig :)

    Cheers,
    CRD

    B for BUS-TED

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    1. Baanware is absolutely gorgeous! Love both the voices. :)

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  12. Love your discussion about old buttons. They are really unique in shape, size, and colour.
    Delightfully done.

    https://moondustwriter.com/2020/04/02/alzheimers-and-old-butcher-knives-part-2-atozchallenge-elderly/

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    1. Buttons last longer than the fabric, a good indicator of who wore what. :)

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  13. That Breathless song left me...breathless? That was amazing. I live in New York State (which is a lot more than New York City) and one of our cities, Rochester, had a long, distinguished history as a button manufacturing center. Those days are gone, but they remain in the name of a distillery near downtown: Black Button Distillery.

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    1. I know of Rochester mainly because a friend's nephew is studying in RIT. Had no idea of the buttons connection, how fascinating! Thank you.

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  14. I think that India still has fantastic, colorful fashion. Here, people seem to be afraid to wear bright colors. hah! I never gave much thought to buttons before, fascinating!

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    1. India does have very colourful fashions but also a wide variety of colours and outfits up and down the country. The kind of stuff worn is as diverse as the people and topography :)

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  15. Hi Nila - not being a great follower of fashion ... I've a vague interest ... and realise how clothing developed from the peoples wandering Europe living in caves etc and onwards through to the Roman Empire and beyond - Edward 1 (966 AD): short tunic, hose and cloak - no doubt fixed with a clasp ... no buttons yet - but there's a wealth of information about buttons - with a lot of lore attached to them. Fascinating snippets here ... cheers Hilary

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    1. Clothing and fashions developed earlier than I thought. I was quite surprised. Pleasantly :) Have a good week and stay safe, Hilary.

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  16. LOL, fashion is the least of my talents. Although I was taught to sew by my grandmother. she'd go to thrift shops to buy her clothes and when she was done re-working them. they were beautiful. A work of art. I've always enjoyed sewing because of her, but I have little to no talent when it comes to fashion! LOL

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    1. I have no clue either, I had to learn sewing and needlework in school, beyond that zilch! I like to read about fashion history though - that's fascinating.

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  17. The Indian people have been fashionistas for many years! The button story is great. There is a museum in Kansas City filled with items recovered from when a steamboat sank on the Missouri River in 1856. It sunk into the mud, then the course of the river changed, and it remained underground until 1988 when it was dug up from what had become a farmer's corn field. The mud preserved everything and it's amazing to see! My favorite part of touring the museum was the buttons. They had jars and jars of calico buttons. If you're ever interested in looking at their website, it's called the Arabia Steamboat Museum.

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