Cleveland Museum of Art

Mantle or Hanging

Date

1480–1635 (radiocarbon date, 95.4% probability)

Medium

cotton; plain weave, brocaded and complex alternating gauze with 3 or 5 shots of plain weave between gauze shots

Culture

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

Department

Textiles

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

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

The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.