Browse Items (35 total)

Tinku, the way that two things can come together to produce a third, is a key Quechua concept. While the rows of tiny woven monkey motifs on the piece at left, barely an inch tall each, are very charming and impressive, they are out of place…

These fragments of an innovative and unique technique date to ca. 200 AD and were made by the Nasca. They originally belonged to the same mantle, but ended up in two different university museum collections: Emory’s (the larger fragment) and…

Like the fragments of hummingbirds, this technically unique three-dimensional embroidery was stitched on the south coast of Perú around 200 AD. Originally, like the hummingbirds, these bean people were attached as borders to a plain-woven cloth…

Of the incredible range of techniques and ideas that the ancient Andean textile artists developed, this piece required perhaps the most complicated creative process of all. At first glance, it simply seems like bits of tie-dyed cloth sewn together in…

Qumpi, what the Inka called cloth made as well as humanly possible, is a deeply Andean category of clothing. Function, such as this being a man’s shirt, was not seen as opposite of what we may call art, the most skilled, aesthetic, intentional, and…

The Inka category of qumpi, or highest-status cloth, included elaborate objects that nevertheless fulfilled various functions, from combs to slings such as this, created and used primarily for warfare. Made with brightly colored camel hair thread…

Tiny rows of birds adorn this very special, yet useable comb. The weaver used the tines as the warps. Unwoven tines go through the hair, but also simulate fringe on a textile. Here the colors feature the typical Chancay palette of soft golds, pinks,…

The Spanish destroyed as much Inka art and culture as possible during the invasion and colonization, melting down the precious metals and burning the royal mummies. Despite this, they admired Inka textiles, as Pizarro’s secretary Francisco de Xeres…

This tiny bit of a very fine tapestry is all that is left from a Tiwanaku-style textile dating to around 600 AD. It features a human arm and hand grasping some kind of a staff, facing right. It was once connected to a very complex body with wings and…

High-status headwear was always the prerogative of the elites in ancient Andean societies. In the Wari Empire, the pre-Inka state that dominated much of the Central Andes ca. 600–1000 AD, officials wore small, four-sided hats that sat high on their…