Wars Of The Romono,
Renaissance Flemish Tapestry,
1575, 16' x 4" x 15',
Donated by Josephine Bay

19th Century Clothing, European Tapestries, & Southeast Asian Textiles

This collection has three components: Vintage Clothing, Tapestries, and the Helen Cappadocia Collection of Southeast Asian Textiles.  The Vintage Clothing Collection consists of 2,100 textiles from the mid-1800s forward including a selection of women's gowns, skirts, blouses, shoes, and Hennessey store hats (1820-1972) as well as children and men's clothes and military hats. 

Tapestry holdings include the Brussels Tapestry:  "Le Joueur de Cornemuse" (The Bagpipe Player), a Flemish Gothic Tapestry:  "Judith with the Head of Holofernes", and a Flemish Renaissance Tapestry:  "Wars of the Romono"-all donated by Josephine Bay.  

The Helen Cappadocia Collection of Southeast Asian Textiles contains more than 600 brilliantly colored textiles created by artists of various ethnic groups including peoples of the Thai Lao language group who live throughout Thailand, Burma, and Laos. The textiles also show the wide dispersal of Hmong across international borders. Included are traditional and ceremonial dress, wedding outfits, skirts, prayer shawls, an elephant head cloth, a money vest, hats, a Buddhist temple banner woven out of cotton and bamboo, and story cloths.