Silk Sarong (Luntaya Acheic)

Luntaya acheic is the prized cloth used for skirtcloth in Burma. The expensive horizontally patterned silk cloth was woven on a hand loom in an interlocking tapestry weave by a pair of girls who painstakingly manipulated 100-200 small shuttles back and forth in turn through a warp of over 1500 threads. The design is of distinct wavelike cables, evoking the ripples and waves of the Irawaddi river. Somehow flowers are worked into the design and the colors tend to be bright. Acheic sarongs originated as court dress but later came to signify social status outside the court as well.