Pa Ndau

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section needs to be wikified to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please help improve this article with relevant internal links. (January 2008)

Pa Ndau (RPA:Paj Ntaub), (pronounced: PAA-dow) is a textile art common within the Hmong community of Southeast Asia, but recently has become a unique symbol of Hmong culture in the United States. "Pa Ndau" in translation, means "story cloth" or "rose cloth" is a tapestry used to describe pictorial scenes of certain events in Hmong cultural life.

Contents 1 Physical description 2 The story it tells 3 See also 4 References

[edit] Physical description

The dominate background base colors of the Pa Ndau are normally blue, but white, green or black are often used to compliment this base blue. There is usually an elaborate border that edges the tapestry; more often is a zigzag pattern. Animal figures are embroidered on the base fabric using their respective colors, such as pigs as pink, geese as white, ducks as yellow, grain off-yellow, etc., while human figures are often shown dressed in black.

[edit] The story it tells

Pa Ndau’s can portray tragic events such as their experiences during their involvement in the Secret War in Laos, but more often tranquil scenes of traditional agrarian chores on farms in their native Laos or Thailand. Such descriptive experiences portrayed in the Pa Ndau can be either personal or even what the community had faced over several generations in time. Some of the largest Pa Ndau’s, often describe personal events during their immigration in coming to United States.

Traditionally, young Hmong girls begin to learn the Pa Ndau as early as five or six. However, before the 1970s, most Pa Ndaus used traditional geometric and abstract designs. Since then, many Hmong embroidery artists living in Thai refugee camps and in their resettlement countries began to use human figures into their embroidered work.^[1]

[edit] See also

MacDowell, Stories in Thread: Hmong Pictorial Embroidery. Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Publications (1989).

[edit] References