MARTINIQUE - Type et Costume Créole: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

A photographic postcard of an unidentified woman from Martinique in traditional Creole dress. Only her torso is shown in silhouette. Her body is facing to the right of the image with her head turned to the left. She wears a traditional douillette clothing ensemble composed of a striped and floral-patterned foulard shawl draped over her shoulders with a matching floral-patterned blouse or dress underneath. She is wearing a large pendant on a necklace and small gold earrings along with a madras headscarf. [MARTINIQUE] is printed in black on the top of the postcard above the woman. On the bottom of the postcard are two lines of print. [Type et Costume Créole / Leboullanger, Fort-de-France - Photogr. Cochet]. The back of the postcard is unused and has [CARTE POSTALE] printed in black at the top. Below, are blank spaces for [CORRESPONDANCE] and [ADRESSE] with four dark blank lines below. The first line begins with [M____].

Materials, dates and provenance

• Date: ca. 1910
• Published by: Leboullanger, French
• Photograph by: Cochet
• Subject of: Unidentified Woman or Women
• Type: portraits
• Type: postcards
• Medium: silver and photographic gelatin on photographic paper, with ink on paper
• Dimensions: H x W: 5 7/16 × 3 1/2 in. (13.8 × 8.9 cm)
• Place captured: Fort-de-France, Martinique, Caribbean, Latin America, North and Central America
• Cultural Place: Madras, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, Asia
• Cultural Place: France, Europe
• Topic: African American
• Topic: African diaspora
• Topic: Clothing and dress
• Topic: Colonialism
• Topic: Fashion
• Topic: Freedom
• Topic: French colonialism
• Topic: Gender
• Object number: 2016.150.2
• Credit Line: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
• Data Source: National Museum of African American History and Culture

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of African American History and Culture through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed. The displayed image also has an explicit CC0 designation. The underlying object's rights statement is: Public domain Proper usage is the responsibility of the user.