Cleveland Museum of Art

Textile Fragment with Frontal Deity Heads, Felines, and Interlace Pattern

Date

700–400 BCE

Medium

camelid fiber; double-cloth with structural embroidery

Culture

Peru, South Coast, Paracas, Yauca Valley(?)

Department

Textiles

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

This textile fragment and (2005.13), belong to a group that represents Andean weavers’ earliest known achievements in double cloth, a technique that allows the creation of identical designs on both faces of the cloth but in reversed colors. They also record the devotion to abstraction typical of the Paracas style. One features three repeats of a highly geometrical standing deity with a fanged mouth. The other includes several stylized deity heads and a blocky, frontally posed feline. The type of garment that these fragments come from remains unknown.

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