Chancay Gauzes

In Late Intermediate period cultures throughout the Andes, motifs held multiple meanings. Artisans who depicted birds, felines, snakes, and lizards in the work could be reflecting both the natural environment of the Andes, portraying the multiple levels of existence (sky, earth and afterworld), and/or drawing a direct connection to specific gods and ancestors.1 The Chancay valley contains a coastal area 25 km long, with lagoons, swamps, coastal hills, and marine salt flats rich in birds, fish and minerals.2 To the Late Intermediate period Chancay, the water was a hallowed place. It provided the coastal dwellers with resources and it was also a dwelling place for ancestors and the departed. As such, representations of water —  such as the fish detailed in this gauze — are common in Chancay textiles. As historian and former Director of the Municipal Museum of Chancay Vicente Cortéz argues, the meaning and value of these textiles to Chancay society cannot be separated from the context in which they were found. Many Late Intermediate period Chancay textiles are from burial sites in the valley. There was a close link between art-making, religious practice, and a person’s safe passing to the afterlife.3‘4

Ornamental and protective gauze with embroidered fish designs, 1100 – 1450 AD. Lauri, Chancay, Lima, Perú. Cotton gauze weave and embroidery, 40 ½ x 37 ½ in. Amano Precolumbian Textile Museum, Lima, Perú. 

Cloth has been a significant part of Andean cultures since the second millennium B.C.11 Cloth has embodied Andean ways of seeing and existing in this world, and beyond this world. Various peoples of the Andes have used cloth as a medium of communication – materials, colors and motifs convey political, social and occupational status. The way the textile is made is just as important as the finished textile itself, and artisans have executed advanced weaving, dyeing, knotting and plaiting techniques accordingly.12,13 Gauze is one example of an openwork weaving technique, where a weaver carefully crosses warp yarns over one another to create openings, and sets those openings in place with weft yarns.14 This portion of the interactive looks at these gauzes in more detail. Though many Andean cultures and kingdoms have produced gauzes, this interactive focuses on the Chancay society based in Chancay valley 80 km north of present-day Lima, Perú, during the Late Intermediate period (roughly 1000 – late 1400s). The information presented in this interactive is based on archaeological work done in the region, and the scholars and historians who interpreted this information. Still, there are limits to what those of us who aren’t weavers and/or local to the region and Chancay society can know about the technique, process and meaning of these openwork textiles.

Gauzes, needle lace, and bobbin lace are all types of openwork, a textile where patterns are formed by intervals of empty spaces. The three differ in how weavers or lacemakers create them, and the tools they use to do so.  Needle lacemakers use needle, thread, and a temporary pattern base to create the needle laces you see throughout this exhibition. There is no warp or weft to anchor the overall textile; the needle lace maker works freehand, using the temporary pattern base to guide their movements.5 Gauze weavers use a loom, crossing warp yarns over one another to create openings, and setting those openings in place with weft yarns.6 The above textile is a zoomed-in reconstruction of the Allover gauze (the highlighted part, only), so it’s easier to see where the warp yarns cross. You’ll notice that in the band at the bottom of the reconstruction textile, the warp and weft yarns intersect at 90 degrees. If the weaver stopped here, this would be a standard plain weave. But by crossing the warp yarns at various spaces as the weaving progressed, the weaver created openings of various sizes. Elaborate designs and motifs require even more elaborate weaving techniques, and sometimes supplementary techniques such as embroidery, decorative borders, fringe, tapestry weaving and dyeing the textiles once finished.7‘8

Reconstruction of Allover gauze, created for the 1948 masters thesis Textile Periods in Ancient Peru III: The Gauze Weaves by Lila M. O’Neale and Bonnie Jean Clark. Plate 3c.

Though these textiles may look very fine, they are strong and resilient. There are many ways to make a textile strong so it can be worn, and resist tearing. A weaver can achieve this with the type of fiber they choose (some are inherently stronger than others), the way the fibers are spun into individual yarns, the way those yarns are woven together to create a textile, the way that textile is finished, and so on. Late Intermediate Chancay weavers paid special attention to the way cotton fibers were spun into individual yarns. They twisted the yarns anywhere from moderately tight to super tight — this packed a lot of fiber into a single yarn, which gave these highly twisted yarns more strength and flex than a loosely twisted one.9 As the enlarged detail image above shows, it also gives these gauzes a curliness when you look up close. The yarns would’ve been held taut on the loom during the weaving process, but once the weaver released the finished textile from the loom, these highly twisted yarns kink and curl back on themselves just like a stretched strand of curly hair easing back into its desired shape. The highly twisted yarns were also strong enough for weavers to weave single ply — as a single yarn — instead of double ply, where they’d twist two yarns around each other for additional strength before weaving it into a textile. Double ply yarns give strength, but they can also make the overall textile denser. Weavers, including the Late Intermediate Chancay and Andean cultures in other regions and eras, did use double ply yarns at times, which produced a denser openwork. Weaving with single ply yarns kept the gauzes lightweight and filmy. And sometimes, weavers even used yarns of different twists (some highly twisted, some moderately twisted), resulting in different visual textures and strengths in a single textile.10

 

Enlarged detail of Allover gauze, Late Intermediate Period. La Mina, near Chancay, Perú. Brown cotton gauze weave, dimensions unknown. Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, Berkeley, California. Photo courtesy of Textile Periods in Ancient Peru III: The Gauze Weaves, plate 21.

Allover gauze, Late Intermediate Period. La Mina, near Chancay, Perú. Brown cotton gauze weave, dimensions unknown. Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, Berkeley, California. Photo courtesy of Textile Periods in Ancient Peru III: The Gauze Weaves, plate 10.

Chancay openwork techniques precede both the Inca domination and Spain’s invasion of the Andes. Though the Inca empire conquered and reorganized the region by the late 1400s, Chancay artisans still produced work during this time. Objects exist that show the presence of Inca in the region, such as ceramics decorated in the classic black-on-white Chancay style, but shaped in the Inca aríbalo style.15 When the Spanish invaded in the early 1500s, they introduced to the region decimating diseases, enslaving encomiendas, and other imperialistic imports, such as needle and bobbin laces. Scholars have studied the Inca response to this destabilization by looking at their colonial-era cumbi, an elite woven tapestry.16 The page Peruvian Lace Motifs also explores this in more detail. More research is required on how openwork weavers in the region adapted and/or responded during this time. Scholar Laura Beltrán-Rubio – who wrote a catalogue essay for this exhibition – argues that the later success of needle and bobbin lace in the Andes during the colonial era was due to both European and Andean systems of value, including established openwork practices that already existed in the region and a culture that emphasized intricate, complex and labor-intensive textiles.17 Today, in the Chancay valley of present-day Perú, there are still weavers who specialize in Chancay openwork techniques. Local Chancay valley vloggers have attempted to document those who still make these gauzes.18

Sources:

  1. Cecilia Pardo Grau, “The living landscapes of Peru,” British Museum, published September 7, 2021, https://blog.britishmuseum.org/the-living-landscapes-of-peru/.
  2. Vicente Cortéz, “Arte Chancay: Reconstrucción Ritual Del Mundo,” En Líneas Generales, no. 3 - 4 (February 2021), 10. https://doi.org/10.26439/en.lineas.generales2020.n3-4.5080.
  3. Cortéz also flags (p. 9 - 11) that many Chancay objects in private and public collections were looted, and not scientifically excavated. The lack of provenance information (which cemetery?) or context (what else was at the burial site? what were the conditions?) presents challenges for scholars studying Chancay art and culture through these objects. But given the importance of spirituality in Chancay society, I also wonder about the practice of exhuming these objects at all. What are the religious consequences? Does it interfere with one’s safe passage and continued rest in the afterlife?
  4. Vicente Cortéz, “Arte Chancay: Reconstrucción Ritual Del Mundo,” En Líneas Generales, no. 3 - 4 (February 2021), 11-12. https://doi.org/10.26439/en.lineas.generales2020.n3-4.5080.
  5. Santina Levey, Lace: A History (Leeds: W.S. Maney, 1983), 4-5, 11.
  6. Irene Emery, “Crossed- and Transposed-Warp Weaves: Use of Terms,” in The Primary Structures of Fabrics (Washington, DC: The Textile Museum & Thames & Hudson, 1966, 2009), 190.
  7. Bonnie Jean Clark and Lila M. O’Neale, “Textile Periods in Ancient Peru III: The Gauze Weaves” (Master's thesis, University of California-Berkeley, 1948), 161.
  8. Bonnie Jean Clark and Lila M. O’Neale, “Textile Periods in Ancient Peru III: The Gauze Weaves” (Master's thesis, University of California-Berkeley, 1948), 171 - 178.
  9. Bonnie Jean Clark and Lila M. O’Neale, “Textile Periods in Ancient Peru III: The Gauze Weaves” (Master's thesis, University of California-Berkeley, 1948), 154-155.
  10. Bonnie Jean Clark and Lila M. O’Neale, “Textile Periods in Ancient Peru III: The Gauze Weaves” (Master's thesis, University of California-Berkeley, 1948), 154-155.
  11. Julia McHugh, “Andean Textiles,” Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, June 2020, https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/adtx/hd_adtx.htm.
  12. Gabriela Ramos, “Los tejidos y la sociedad colonial andina,” Colonial Latin American Review 19, no. 1 (April 2010): 115. https://doi.org/10.1080/10609161003643719.
  13. Julia McHugh, “Andean Textiles,” Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, June 2020, https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/adtx/hd_adtx.htm.
  14. Bonnie Jean Clark and Lila M. O’Neale, “Textile Periods in Ancient Peru III: The Gauze Weaves” (Master’s thesis, University of California-Berkeley, 1948), 161.
  15. Vicente Cortéz, “Arte Chancay: Reconstrucción Ritual Del Mundo,” En Líneas Generales, no. 3 – 4 (February 2021), 14. https://doi.org/10.26439/en.lineas.generales2020.n3-4.5080.
  16. Gabriela Ramos, “Los tejidos y la sociedad colonial andina,” Colonial Latin American Review 19, no. 1 (April 2010): 115 – 149. https://doi.org/10.1080/10609161003643719.
  17. Laura Beltrán-Rubio, Lecture at Bard Graduate Center for 473. Threads of Power course, October 18, 2021. See exhibition catalogue essay for more.
  18. Augusto Olivos Martinez, “Técnica textil Chancay se estaría perdiendo,” Youtube, November 11, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ofq_nGwLTD8.