It seems with folk art–or with certain old textiles–it’s not just its age that burnishes the piece with a rich luster, it’s also the wear to the piece by its former owners or its maker that lends it character.  It’s this warmth from human contact that endows a piece its soulfulness.Today I am showing a piece that exemplifies this idea.  It’s a Pakistani ralli, it measures 27″ x 26″/ 68.5 cm x 66 cm, it most likely dates to mid-last-century, and it’s probably a sitting mat.  It is stitched together from old, cotton cloth which has been layered and secured with many tight rows of running stitches.  The face of the cloth, seen in the fifth photo below, shows applique and some fancy embroidery work.For me, the beauty of this piece is in its abrasion and fading,  both qualities working in concert and leaving behind some kind of  strange and beautiful delicacy.Years and years of soft and steady wear have created a kind of translucency to these layers that is inimitable.

Notice how the fancy embroidery stitches remain very much intact as the cloth around them has sloughed off over time.  It’s almost like we are seeing soft, geometric fossils.

The color palette we see here today was never meant to be seen: how could the maker know that in fifty years time the cloth would reveal its layers in a tight spectrum of pale hues?  What we see today is not what she saw when she stitched and composed this ralli.

I can’t imagine that this piece looked better when it was new.  I am sure that the many hands that touched this piece and the flow of decades that have nourished it have elevated this piece from a simple sitting mat to a textile eloquent in subtlety and resonant with new beauty.

A client stopped by to look at my collection of ralli quilts from Sindh, a region that straddles the Pakistan/India border.  I pulled out all the quilts so we could look at them, and they ended up in a big pile–and I thought this haphazard arrangement showed off their diverse colors and patterns really nicely.

These rallis all happen to be bedcovers, but using the same technique of piecing and quilting, the ladies of Sindh would also fashion bags, saddle blankets and other household items.

The photos shown on this post show the proper fronts of the rallis, which are always based on a kind of repeat-pattern geometric design using scraps of  cotton cloth as the medium.  Very often, however, the backs of rallis employ a more expressionistic and less formalized piecing of repurposed cloth— and the backs are generally more to my liking.

Notice the tremendous amount of piecing, applique work and hand stitching that make up each of these rallis.

This Wednesday, on my website, I’ll be offering one of these beauties for sale.  I selected to show a ralli with a beautifully composed “front” and a back that is stylistically very different from the formalized design of the front.

Stay tuned.