RESEARCH DATA:

Ga’dang garments are among the most heavily embellished textiles in the Cordillera. The use of beads of varying sizes, shapes, and colors in embroidery, tassel work, and other embellishing techniques, along with finely crafted execution, makes these textiles truly remarkable. One such example from this textile collection is the baruwasi, commonly worn by Ga’dang women. It is richly embellished with blue, red, white, and yellow beads, which are embroidered and sewn onto the textile. Moreover, the base textile used for this garment features a striped design locally referred to as la-lad. The la-lad is a plain-woven cloth with alternating stripes of brown and deep red (San Agustin, 2007), but in the case of this textile from the collection, the stripes consist of black, red, and white. Near the bottom of the garment are beaded fringes with circular Japanese metal coins attached at the ends as dangles. The acquisition of these coins was likely due to the trading of the Ga’dang with other groups from lowland Luzon.