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Local style, Chancay, Central Coast. (1100-1470 CE). Brocade.
Frame = 17” x 14”; (43.18 cm x 35.56 cm)
Textile = 10.5” x 7.5”: (26.67 cm x 19.05 cm)
In pre-Columbian Andean cultures, the most exquisite textiles were more highly valued than other material goods, including gold & silver. These textiles were woven as sacred offerings to the deities; as garments to indicate the wearer’s noble status; as a medium for the transmission of religion; for political purposes; and for trade.
Because of the supreme importance of these textiles, the most skilled weavers had both the time to explore a broad range of techniques and to create imaginative designs, as well as the materials to produce the most valuable textiles. Pre-Columbian Andean weavers independently invented nearly all of the non-mechanized textile techniques known today, as well as a broad range of creative designs. As a result, their most elaborate textiles are the finest handmade in the Western Hemisphere and among the world’s most exquisite.
Design: A weaver from the Chancay Culture, the preeminent pre-Columbian weaving culture, created this brocade textile. Rebecca Stone-Miller, a leading expert in pre-Columbian Andean textiles, finds that brocades “are among the most beautiful and sophisticated of Chancay textile products.”
The imaginative design incorporates several aesthetic elements of Chancay brocades. A single motif, a bird depicted in profile and small in scale, is repeated in a zig-zag pattern. The body of each bird in a diagonal is of one color, and the weaver enlivens the decorative field by alternating colors among the diagonals.
Technique: The yarn is dyed with all-natural dyes and hand-spun with cotton for the plain ground cloth and camelid fibers for the supplementary wefts. The wefts are the crosswise threads; and the warps are the lengthwise, load-bearing threads that are attached to the top bar of the loom.
The weaver hand-wove it on a back-strap loom, the traditional loom of the Andes. It basically consists of a bar at the top of the loom and a bar at the bottom, with the warp threads strung tautly in between. The top bar is attached by a cord to a fixed object, such as a tree. The bottom bar is attached to a belt around the weaver’s waist, who can move to hold the warp threads taut.
In a brocade, supplementary wefts float over the warps of the ground cloth. That is, a weft thread passes over or skips more than one warp thread to form each bird. The supplemental wefts are used sparingly for maximum decorative effect.
Condition of the fragment: Good condition for its age and well-preserved. It was buried in the sand of the arid Pacific desert, where conditions are so dry that organic material remains well-preserved for centuries. The supplementary wefts have retained much of their luster and vibrancy of their colors. With the exception of a few loose threads, the weaving of the fragment is intact.
Provenance of this textile: My wife and I purchased this textile in 1974 and brought it legally into the United States in 1975, well before the US’s Cultural Property Implementation Act (CPIA) went into effect in1983. The textile is legal to buy and sell.
