Threads of Time: Tradition and Change in Indigenous American Textiles
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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 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.…
Three-Panel Textile Fragment
Indigenous Amerindian clothing has almost always been woven to shape or constructed from complete parts united in the final garment without recourse to cutting the cloth. This ancient textile, which could have had many other pieces sewn alongside…
Textile with Pelican Shaman
This brocaded cloth features a supernatural pelican-man. Still bright after over five hundred years, scarlet highlights the standing figure’s face and the many little pelicans that sit on his arms and emerge magically from/as his body. The two…
Textile Fragment with Interlocking Snakes
Though this is only a small portion of the original composition, even in this fragmentary state the amount of thread that floats over the surface of the ground cloth is amazing. The cloth is the greenish brown that is now functioning only as the…
Textile Fragment with Color Anomaly
Although this piece is also only part of a larger composition, nevertheless it is very revealing. Here the intentional color surprise is the bright pink background for the yellow bird toward the top right corner. No other instance of such a color is…