brown plastic body and head with black cotton thread hair, printed cotton cloth dress and headdress, white and blue cotton undergarments, orange glass seed bead earrings.
Donor:
Judah L. Magnes Museum
Collection place:
Suriname
Verbatim coll. place:
Suriname
Collector:
Ralph Bennett
Collection date:
1979-1980
Materials:
Cotton (textile), Glass (material), and Plastic (organic material)
Object type:
ethnography
Object class:
Dolls (figurines)
Function:
5.7 Objects made for sale, souvenirs, models, and reproductions
Context of use:
Collector's information concerning doll's costume states, "Kotto-missi is an expression that is short for 'cotton covered miss' and stems from the fact that when the Hernhutter Protestant missionaries arrived from Holland and Germany in the early 1700's they were shocked to see the Negro women walking around bare breasted. Similarly to what was done in Hawaii, voluminous mumu type dresses with lots of fabric were used to cover up the black women's bodies. Another part of the costume was the elaborate headdress, tied in various ways to indicated whether the wearer was single, married or a widow, etc.”