Textiles represent the most important artistic production of the various Chin communities that inhabit areas of Burma, India, and Bangladesh. Textiles reflect status and wealth of the wearer and are important items of exchange, whether through marriage price, gift-giving, the hosting of merit feasts, or trade. Women weave textiles of local cotton, or silk gained through trade, and dye the yarns using local and imported dyes. Using simple back-strap body-tension looms, the various Chin groups achieve complex, distinctive patterns using weft-faced or warp-faced weaves with supplementary wefts and, in some traditions, so-called “false embroidery.”

This Northern Chin type of red silk mantle would be worn for feasts or other ceremonial occasions, wrapped around the body so that the diamond-patterned stripes are horizontally oriented. Depending on the intricacy of the designs, a large cawng nak puan, which is constructed of two loom-widths of cloth sewn together, might take a year to complete.