Mantle (Peruvian, Wari, A.D. 700-900)

This lively and technically-virtuosic Peruvian mantle is currently on view in conjunction with the MFA, Boston’s contemporary installation, Cecilia Vicuña: Disappeared Quipu. The mantle, along with other garments that Chilean artist and poet Cecilia Vicuña selected from renowned collections of ancient Andean textiles (MFA, Boston and Brooklyn Museum), assumes a parallel life in a 4-channel video projection that spills over a central configuration of hanging knotted wool—monumental quipu evoking the recording device used by Inkan culture and made with plied and knotted cords. Three of the MFA’s prized Andean textiles rest at the gallery’s periphery, along with five ancient quipu from the Peabody Museum at Harvard—transforming the nature of time and space in a collapse of past and present, as Vicuña creates an immersive environment in which to memorialize and remember.

The physical presence of this mantle from Peruvian Wari culture, in conversation with the central copse of monumental quipu assembled by Vicuña, bridging thousands of years from the ancient past to the present moment, has been exhilarating for me. The first and last time I had a chance to view this textile was in 1992, when it was showcased in the exhibit To Weave for the Sun: Andean Textiles in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The elaborate method of its woven construction affirms the preeminent value placed on textile production in Andean culture, for which extensive labor and technical achievement were among the primary measures. The interlocking stepped triangles shown in the detail images above and below were individually woven using discontinuous warp and weft, a technically-demanding technique for weaving irregular shapes. The triangles were temporarily connected to each other in strips using scaffolding threads. After the strips were resist-dyed, each in a particular color, the individual triangles were disassembled, and reassembled, in a new configuration.

Rebecca Stone Miller, author of the catalog accompanying the 1992 exhibit To Weave for the Sun, writes:

The term “patchwork” does not do justice to the intricacy of the creative process. To my knowledge, the process used here is unique in world fiber history…A technical discovery of this kind underscores how important it was to the ancient Andeans not to cut fabric, how much labor was expended to obtain a particular visual effect, and how central innovation was to the aesthetic system.”

Click for description and collections data on mfa.org

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Objects in Brief is a randomized showcase of the MFA, Boston’s encyclopedic Textile and Fashion Arts collections. A featured object is indicative of the author’s curiosity and chosen so she may learn about its material and structural properties, function, history, and greater story. These “quick studies” have led to more in-depth explorations posted in A Closer Look.