The Michael C. Carlos Museum: Chancay Openwork

The Michael C. Carlos Museum's openwork headcloth

The Michael C. Carlos Museum features within its collection an example of an Andean woman's headcloth embroidered in an “openwork” style, which means that a series of extremely fine threads are incorporated to elaborate a few grids more than others, so that some grids are filled with thread, and others are more open.

There are two repeating patterns in the Carlos Museum's Chancay textile piece. The first is a set of interlocking birds, recalling the ancient Peruvian tendency to feature images of birds in honor of the bird god of the Andean pantheon. As birds are capable of flight high into the heavens, birds in Chancay textiles often symbolize heavenly beings and connection and communication with the heavens: literally, a “higher” power.

The second motif featured in the Carlos Museum's textile piece is more open to interpretation. At varying angles, the second motif could be a feline figure, or it could also be the head of a snake. The headcloth is dated around 1000 to 1470 CE.

The headcloth is intriguing because its images are only clearly viewable when the cloth is stretched taut. Equally profound and characteristically Andean, this aspect of the headcloth reminds the textile object's viewer that ancient Andean art was created not for human delight, but rather for the delight of deities. It is for this reason that textiles and fabrics of ancient Peru are so painstakingly prepared. The embroidery featured on these complex and symbolic patterns are meant for divine eyes (both those divine entities in the heavens and their sons on the throne)--not those of mortals.