Object Record
Images
Metadata
Catalog number |
99.2.6 |
Artist |
Unknown |
Title |
Inca bag with long tassels (ch'uspa) |
Date |
Pre-Columbian |
Object Name |
Bag |
Description |
A large Bag with long tassels is made from cotton and wool fibers. The bag is woven with cotton warp and wool weft in a minute and painstaking pattern. White, black, and deep red fibers create an interlocking system of triangles and diamonds, which repeat in three vertical columns. The arrangement of the colors and shapes allow the pattern a nearly three-dimensional appearance, which may have been a strategic device intended to evoke some aspect of the natural world. Such a reading follows Marianne Hogue's suggestion that the checkerboard pattern found in some Inca textiles symbolized the mountains that they terraced for agricultural purposes. Although Inca textiles were sometimes created by groups of weavers, it is likely that the bag was created by a single weaver because it is relatively small. Bags similar to this are still made in the Andes today, and are often used to carry coca leaves, which many Andeans chew to help ease the physical effects caused by the high altitude. Julia Clapp, "Inca Textiles" in "Natural and Supernatural: Andean Textiles and Material Culture," (G -T M, Queens College, CUNY, September 8 - October 24, 2009), 34. |
Medium/Material |
Cotton, wool, natural dyes |
Dimensions |
W-12 L-22 inches |
Year Range from |
1200 |
Year Range to |
1400 |
Exhibition and Publication History |
Julia Clapp, "Inca Textiles" in "Natural and Supernatural: Andean Textiles and Material Culture," (G -T M, Queens College, CUNY, September 8 - October 24, 2009), 34. |
Culture |
Inca |