Mola (art form)

Common card · No. 399451

The Mola or Molas is a hand-made textile that forms part of the traditional women's clothing of the indigenous Guna people from Panama. Their clothing includes a patterned wrapped skirt (saburet), a red and yellow headscarf (musue), arm and leg beads (wini), a gold nose ring (olasu) and earrings in addition to the mola blouse (dulemor). In Dulegaya, the Guna's native language, "mola" means "shirt" or "clothing". The mola originated with the tradition of Guna women painting their bodies with geometric designs, using available natural colors; at a certain point, after the arrival of the Spanish, these same designs were woven in cotton, and later still, sewn using cloth "acquired by trade from the ships that came to barter for coconuts during the 19th century".

Read on Wikipedia · Image Markus Leupold-Löwenthal, CC BY-SA 3.0