Name/Title
Chest Panel (1950s-1960s)Entry/Object ID
2026.001aTags
Bayt wa BaladDescription
This fragment was received as part of a group donation formed during the 2023 genocide in Gaza, when members of the Palestinian diaspora sought to reclaim Palestinian embroidery and return cultural material to Palestinian museums and community institutions. This panel is one of five embroidered chest panels included in that donation.
These embroidered chest panels date to the mid to late twentieth century and are fragments from earlier Palestinian dresses (thobe, ثَوْب). From the 1950s onward, embroidery on Palestinian dress increasingly expressed a national Palestinian identity rather than the localized regional affiliations traditionally associated with specific villages or towns. Embroidery from this period commonly features curvilinear motifs executed exclusively in cross-stitch, including stylized flowers, branches, and birds. Dresses were cut using fewer fabric components, a shift that made their production more accessible to Palestinians with limited financial resources for cloth, threads, and embroidery materials, particularly in refugee camps and in exile. Palestinian women have continued to gather in community settings to stitch and create traditional dresses in the diaspora, including the donors of this object, sustaining Palestinian embroidery practices through both inherited and contemporary forms.
Citation: Ghnaim, Wafa. "THOBNA: Reclaiming Palestinian Dresses in the Diaspora." Washington, DC: The Tatreez Institute, 2023.Collection
Permanent CollectionMade/Created
Date made
circa 1950 - circa 1969Time Period
20th CenturyRelationships
Related Places
Notes
type: travel
date: 1950 - 2024
certainty: approximate
notes: The chest panel was embroidered and worn by its maker as part of a Palestinian dress before the garment was sold into the tourist market. The panel was subsequently cut from the dress and sold separately, later entering a collection in the Netherlands. It was acquired by the donor group through an online transaction in 2024 via the Facebook group "Ethnic Textiles Community."Notes
type: travel
date: 2024
certainty: precise
notes: The chest panel was acquired by the donor group, shipped from the Netherlands to Virginia.Notes
type: travel
date: 2024
certainty: precise
notes: The donors ships the objects to the Museum of the Palestinian People.Provenance
Provenance Detail
Group DonationNotes
Carmel Delshad; Ben, Leigh and Aelin Riddick; Zaynab Alsharif; The Flefil and Al-Araj families of Beit-Lahem and Beit-Jala; Sunday Xiques; Nahedah Zayed Fayyad; Hala Paskaleva; Najat Al-Sherri; Jovanna David; Laila Mokhiber; Lena Routhieaux; Taqwa Abdallah; Marie Denise Tarud Castano; Amnah Ibrahim; Leena Asmar; Rory Queripel.