Headcloth
Chancay (Central coast, Peru)
1000-1476
- Medium
- Cotton, plain weave; tie dyed
- Classification
- Textile
- Dimensions
- 96.5 × 101.6 cm (38 × 40 in.)
- Culture
- Peruvian Central Coast
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Textiles
- Credit line
- Gift of Frank B. Hubachek
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Although this headcloth looks like a gauze from afar, it is actually a much simpler plain weave. Rather than invest time in weaving the sheer fabric, its maker focused on creating its circular patterns by tying off small sections of the cotton cloth and dyeing it. The technique is similar to making a modern tie-dyed T-shirt but executed at a much smaller scale. Chancay weavers on the coast likely inherited this technique from their ancestors in the Andean highlands, weavers of the Wari Empire, who created elaborately tie-dyed, alpaca-fiber tunics in much brighter colors.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
