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

The object in the museum catalogue

A picture postcard of an unidentified woman from Martinique in traditional Creole dress. She is wearing a checker pattered long-sleeve dress with a knit scarf draped over her shoulders and a high conical straw bakoua hat. She is seated, resting her right forearm on the arm of a tasseled chair and her left hand is resting in her lap. The image has a stamp on the top right covering a portion of the hat. The stamp is green with an image of a woman in a madras head scarf and [MARTINIQUE] printed above in brown ink. A second circular ink stamp is placed on top stating, [MARTINIQUE FORT DE FRANCE / 25/2S [indecipherable]]. Beneath the image, black printed text reads [MARTINIQUE - Type et Costume Créole] and [Leboullanger éditeur, Fort-de-France]. 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]. Four dark blank lines are below the Adresse. The first line begins with [M____].

Materials, dates and provenance

• Date: 1908-1930
• Published by: Leboullanger, French
• Photograph by: Unidentified
• Subject of: Unidentified Woman or Women
• Type: postcards
• Medium: ink on paper and adhesive
• Dimensions: H x W: 5 1/2 × 7/16 in. (14 × 1.1 cm)
• Place captured: Fort-de-France, Martinique, Caribbean, Latin America, North and Central America
• Cultural Place: France, Europe
• Cultural Place: Madras, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, Asia
• Topic: African American
• Topic: African diaspora
• Topic: Clothing and dress
• Topic: Colonialism
• Topic: Fashion
• Topic: Freedom
• Topic: French colonialism
• Topic: Gender
• Object number: 2016.151.5
• 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.