A Palestinian embroidery recently added to the TRC Collection and what it can tell
TRC 2023.0064). More specifically it is very likely that it comes from Hebron, in what is now the southern West Bank and about 19 km south of Jerusalem. In the Hebron region such a shawl is called a ghudfeh. Furthermore, the piece appears to date to c. 1900. But how did we come to these conclusions? In other words, what did the embroidery tell us?
Among the textiles and garments recently donated to the TRC Leiden by the Dool family, Dordrecht, is an embroidered cloth (obviously damaged) that has since been identified as part of a Palestinian embroidered shawl (There are various clues:
The ground cloth is hand woven and is made up of three lengths of cloth that are each about 36 cm in width and have slightly ‘wobbly’ selvedges (not the 'perfect' selvedges associated with machine made cloth). The width of the cloth is an indication that the cloth was probably woven on a horizontal loom (normal for the Levant) worked by one person. Such a three-piece shawl is common for Hebron shawls. The Hebron element is also suggested by the type of fringing at one of the transverse ends.