A married Erzya woman wore the panga: a birch-bark frame up to thirty centimetres tall, skinned in linen, faced with red cloth, loaded with beads, bugles, buttons and galloon, a soft embroidered tail down the back. Below it, the white panar tunic.

Its embroidery is home-dyed red and black wool counted thread by thread into stepped diamonds and zigzags, worked so densely the wool becomes the surface and the hemp-linen reads as the gap. Coins and cowries hang at the edges. Nothing here is freehand.