Artwork Page for Mantle or Hanging

Details / Information for Mantle or Hanging

Mantle or Hanging

1480–1635 (radiocarbon date, 95.4% probability)

Peru, North Coast, Chimú style, 1200-1460s

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Medium
cotton; plain weave, brocaded and complex alternating gauze with 3 or 5 shots of plain weave between gauze shots
Measurements
Overall: 162.5 x 272 cm (64 x 107 1/16 in.); Mounted: 177.8 x 287 cm (70 x 113 in.)
Credit Line
Norman O. Stone and Ella A. Stone Memorial Fund 2005.5.1
Public Domain
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Location
Not on view
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Did You Know?

The Chimú forged an empire that thrived until the 1460s, when the Inka incorporated it into their own imperial domain.

Description

This garment embodies an important principle of the Chimú textile aesthetic: a love of combining different textures, some dense and sculptural and others so open and airy they are nearly invisible. (The hand-spun yarns are only .1 to .2 millimeters in diameter.) It also elegantly articulates the simplified, spare visual vocabulary that the Chimú favored, here geometric motifs.
A horizontally long cream cotton textile is patterned with tightly woven polka-dots against a gauzy background and with a fringe on the short sides. Looking closer, a subtle checkered pattern underlies the polka dots, alternating between fine threads woven into a solid, gauzy field, over which the dots are woven, and threads creating more of a mesh. Some worn away sections have been repaired with a solid, gauzy weave.

Mantle or Hanging

1480–1635 (radiocarbon date, 95.4% probability)

Peru, North Coast, Chimú style, 1200-1460s

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