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In the Beginning There Was Thread:
INCA DRESS CODE: Textiles and Adornment
in Pre-Columbian America
Upon his arrival on the South
American continent in 1532, Francisco Pizarro
moved the indigenous heaven and earth to find
gold, silver, and jewels—in short, everything
that Westerners valued most. In doing so, he
ignored another type of treasure produced by
the Inca people—one woven from fiber, thread,
and sometimes feathers. Even today, textiles haven’t
really secured a place in most Westerners’
perceptions.1 The art of the weaver goes little
recognized because it is still considered the trivial
result of a craft that is simply a response to
a necessity. This reductionist conception of the
textile is typically and strictly a Western one.
Considered as a whole, and as a living thing
imbued with cultural significance and unique
symbolism, the Andean textile reveals not only
astonishing mastery of complex techniques but
also provides crucial information that allows a
better understanding of these peoples in the absence
of a written language.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
when exoticism was in vogue, the Americas
aroused renewed interest, and the European eye
wallowed in a fabricated vision of the “Indians,”
a situation effectively demonstrated in the
recent Aztec Hotel exhibition at the Musée du
Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac. Feathers, skulls,
and banana leaves abound in this prolific imaginary
world nourished by the early images of
Théodor de Bry and the romantic stories of Chateaubriand.
No importance was attached to the
veracity of the representations that were made.
Within this milieu, certain major pieces such as
the famous “Mantle of Moctezuma”2 remained
inaccurately identified for decades. That these
clichés survive tenaciously is attested to by box
office results for films like Mel Gibson’s Apoc-
By Agathe Torres
FIG. 1 (above):
Anthropomorphic vessel.
Moche, North Coast, Peru.
AD 100–600.
Terracotta. H: 19.3 cm.
Musée Royal d’Art et d’Histoire,
Brussels, inv. AAM 46.7.168.
© KMKG-MRAH.
FIG. 2 (below): Cloak pins,
tupus. Inca, Peru.
AD 1450–1532.
Silver. 24 x 2 cm.
Linden-Museum Stuttgart.
© Linden-Museum Stuttgart.
Photo: A. Dreyer.
FEATURE