THE TEXTILES

This textile fragment is attributed to the Paracas culture, a coastal community that inhabited present-day Peru between 200 B.C.E – 500 C.E. This textile was most likely found in the Necropolis burial site, where the Paracas people buried their dead in elaborately wrapped bundles of decorative cloth. Tunics, which informed cult affiliation and class status for the living, became funerary garments for the deceased. This specific piece exhibits the use of block style embroidery, a method widely used in the Paracas textile tradition. The artist would embroider the entirety of a finely woven piece of cloth using brightly dyed camelid fibers, creating an illusion of a woven design that was, in fact, meticulously stitched.

This finely woven tapestry fragment associated with the Tiwanaku culture dates between 500 – 900 C.E. Large and far-reaching, the Tiwanaku empire was mainly situated around Lake Titicaca in present-day Bolivia but maintained a presence in the Andes. It was in the mountains, where alpacas, llamas and vicuñas roamed, that Tiwanaku textile traditions gained momentum. Supplied with local, easily obtained materials, artists were able to hone their abilities as skilled spinners, dyers, and tapestry weavers. The finely woven tapestries that are attributed to the Tiwanaku culture, such as those in the Mead’s collection, demonstrate this culture’s command of tapestry weaving.