Lot 129
Pre-Columbian, South Coast of Peru, Nazca to Huari (Wari) culture, ca. 100 to 700 CE. An astounding and sizable dyed textile mantle created from cotton and camelid fibers (llama or camelid wool), with a bold geometric design in bright colors for which the Nazca are justifiably famous! The mantle is decorated with a gridded pattern of alternating bright red, sky blue, and navy-blue rectangular panels, each then filled with hollow diamonds in white or yellow. This pattern was a prized and popular style, but a demanding creation involving discontinuous warps and scaffold cord techniques - incredibly the textile is woven from plain fibers, then taken apart into sections, dyed, often dyed several times to get the layered color combinations we see here, and then each panel is reassembled back together! The ancient textile is professionally mounted on a cloth backing over a wooden frame for displaying. Size (textile): 75.5" L x 55" W (191.8 cm x 139.7 cm); (frame mounting): 79.25" L x 58.625" W (201.3 cm x 148.9 cm)
In Nazca cemeteries, the dead were wrapped in layers of cloth. Elite people were given brightly tie-dyed textiles like this one, along with jewelry decorated with feathers and precious metals. Many hours of labor would have gone into making this mantle, and the imagery and colors were intended to convey the veneration of the deceased ancestor, as well as to form a bridge between the living and the dead. Analyses of similar textiles in museum collections have shown that the color and motif choices were complex and systematic, with some meaning that we can only guess at today, nearly two thousand years removed from this culture that left no written records.
Provenance: private Tucson, Arizona, USA collection, acquired between 1950 and 1985
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#147713
- Condition: Tearing and perforations throughout. Fraying and losses to fibers to interior panels. Some staining and discoloration, but colors are still bright. Professionally mounted on a modern cloth over a wooden frame and is ready for displaying. Please note the large size of this piece!
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