Threads of Time: Tradition and Change in Indigenous American Textiles
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Tunic or Mantle Fragment with Multi-Color Feathers
Most Native Americans consider bird feathers not only beautiful, but sacred gifts from the Winged Beings since molted feathers fall on the ground as if from the celestial realm. Tropical feathers especially exhibit brilliant natural coloration.…
Tunic or Mantle Fragment with Orange Feathers
Most Native Americans consider bird feathers not only beautiful, but sacred gifts from the Winged Beings since molted feathers fall on the ground as if from the celestial realm. Tropical feathers especially exhibit brilliant natural coloration.…
Tunic or Mantle Fragment with Tie-Dyed Stepped Triangles
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…
Tunic with Birds
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…
Typical Man's Garments from Chichicastenango
Unlike Maya women’s dress, men’s dress, by contrast, reflects their greater participation in the political, economic, and religious colonial world established by the European invaders. Tailoring lengths of cloth, an idea that was antithetical to…
Typical Woman’s Garments from Chajul
Throughout history, what is considered “traditional” changes over time. Colonized peoples like the Maya, who still number at least six million today, retain certain items of dress from their long past, while adopting others from their colonizers, the…
