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24 ;Skirts.

GS 17 (Figs. 17, 18 and 19) is the skirt or hta-men of a Shan woman from the Burmo-Chinese frontier, and seems to be of an unusual type as regards its embroidered decoration, in which the peacock and floral motives alternate (p. 21, 22). Contrary to expectation the treatment of the peacock in the design shows distinct Indian influence rather than Chinese. The garment itself consists of two pieces of heavy striped cloth, each 130 cm. by 63 cm., which is an unusual width for a native production, and in which the arrangement of the stripes is interesting; there are plain stripes of one colour covered by embroidery, and fancy stripes composed of a number of smaller ones of different colours which act as borders to the embroidered. The weft is red throughout, and the colours of the stripes are dependent upon those of the warp. There is a great variation in the width of the stripes, practically no two being alike, but some idea of their relative proportions can be gathered from the measurements given below, which have been taken from left to right across one piece of the cloth. It will be noticed that the six wide plain stripes have a handsome design in which pairs of conventionally rendered peacocks alternate with a four armed floral motive (Fig. 17a). The pattern is worked in magenta, rose, green, yellow, white and black, the outline being embroidered first, and the design then filled with buttonhole stitching. The direction of the stitches is shewn generally in Fig. 17 and more particularly in Fig. 18, which also gives some indication of the colours used in that portion, all solid lines representing black silk and shaded stitches green silk, whilst the filling of a and c is yellow, and of b and d white.