For this Nalbound Object of the Week, we look to the Pech people of Northeastern Honduras. Now in the Ethnographic collections of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, we find this lovely open worked nalbound bag in alternating light and darker brown stripes.
Courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and
Ethnology, Harvard University. https://peabody.harvard.edu/ Request reproduction rights from https://peabody.harvard.edu/rights-and-reproductions
Object: Pech Bag
Description: The bag starts at the base in the lighter brown and is worked for three rows with some increases visible. Followed by two rows of the darker brown and then three, three, three, and two alternating. The bag is recorded as being 19 5/16 inches high by 14 15/16 inches wide with a thickness of 1 5/16 inches (49 x 38 x 3.4cm). The opening shows no signs of decreasing the row height or otherwise finishing the mouth of the bag. The fabric builds in an clockwise S type spiral implying it was likely worked with the fabric suspended above while being worked.
Dated to: No date provided.1 The bag is part of the Ethnographic collections, so possibly collected sometime within the last one hundred and fifty years.
Culture: The Pech people, formerly known as Paya2
Find location (Continent, current country, original culture): Plaintain River, Honduras3
Material: The online catalog only describes the material as fiber.4 It may possibly Maguey (Agave sisalana f. armata) or Aechmea as both are noted as being used by the Pech to make bags.5
Stitch(es) used: B2 U/OU as read from the technical front of the work with crosses up. (Stitch determination by Anne Marie Decker based on .TIFF photograph provided by the museum for research purposes.) Given that the clockwise S type spiral direction of work reads right to left in that orientation combined with the B2 connection, this bag was likely worked with the fabric above the hands instead of suspended below. (If worked dependent (unlikely), then this would likely be indicative of being worked left-handed.) So in working, with the fabric suspended and growing down, the direction of work would read left to right, as is most frequent and the stitch would be worked as F2 O/UO crosses down.
Object number: 26-42-20/C9921
Current location: Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, Harvard University
Link to museum catalog or other data: https://collections.peabody.harvard.edu/objects/172889
Some sources in which more information can be found:
Lentz, David. “Medicinal and other economic plants of the Paya of Honduras” in Economic Botany. 47. pgs. 358-370. DOI: 10.1007/BF02907349.
Minority Rights Group: Pech in Honduras
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- https://collections.peabody.harvard.edu/objects/172889 Accessed 24 June 2024. ↩︎
- Paya https://collections.peabody.harvard.edu/objects/172889 Accessed 24 June 2024. ↩︎
- https://collections.peabody.harvard.edu/objects/172889 Accessed 24 June 2024. ↩︎
- Online catalog is no more descriptive. https://collections.peabody.harvard.edu/objects/172889 Accessed 24 June 2024. ↩︎
- See Lentz, David. “Medicinal and other economic plants of the Paya of Honduras” in Economic Botany. 47. pg. 369. DOI: 10.1007/BF02907349. ↩︎