Fine Art Tapestries in Alpaca

A Visual History

Andean tradition collides with radical new design principles in these unique works of alpaca fiber art.

    To an Andean native, a textile is a living being; he would not cut it out of respect for its internal life, the exalted ancestor and storyteller whose only permanent voice was imagery. The only case in which he would suspend this belief was during a sacrifice. On occasion, a textile was burned in exchange for divine bounty, a practice that has been conserved only in some ancestral crannies of southern Peru. More valuable than gold, decorative fabrics were commissioned from every household as a form of tax, which the Inca Emperor himself wore and displayed for only a day before retiring them forever. Too sacred to be grasped by human hands, many would be burned along with everything the Inca either used or touched during that year. Some select textiles would accompany the emperors' mummies long after death. The mummies were paraded in the streets of Cuzco like a procession of living people, adorned with textiles for the mortal eyes to behold their messages.

     Fortunately, the most common practice of textile sacrifice was not destructive at all. They were in effect sealed in time capsules - in tombs. The finest clothes adorned the tombs to provide comfort in the afterworld. A vast resource of recovered textiles empower our eye with history, exposing the creative individualistic thought of a dozen distinct eras of the Andean timeline. Many have survived for millennia intact, scarcely dulling in color due to the sophisticated preparation of dyes.

     The textiles catalogued here revisit classic designs of the first millennium CE. By deepening the dimensionality, expanding the color range, altering content, overhauling composition, and generally reworking the design, these tapestries deliver the intriguing psyche of ancient Americans to modern walls. Traditional knowledge, however, guides the weaver in technique and materials. The technical process that created these monumental textiles strictly adheres to the ancient Andean model. The material is pure alpaca wool spun by hand on drop-spindles. The dyes are derived exclusively from plants, trees, minerals and even insects that inhabit the Peruvian Andes and Amazon regions, according to precise recipes unknown to most fiber artists today. Of the minority who use alpaca wool, only a handful still employ this extensive and challenging preparation, preferring to use a cheaper factory-spun, chemically-dyed wool that lacks the tonal variation and nuance that makes hand-spun wool come alive.

     The symbolism of most pre-Inca textiles placed realistic figures – such as felines, condors, jaguars and serpents as hybrid anthropomorphic deities – within rich geometric landscapes. As the images that defined a people, they were a constant reminder of the human condition: our imagination and thus our gods straddle the temporary (living beings) and eternal (mathematical order and chaos). The Wari Empire, which laid the foundation for the Inca empire, produced some of the most intriguing designs with the highest craftsmanship ever seen in the Americas. Individualistic Wari artists took pride in their encrypted interpretations of the ancestral imagery, finding sensitive balances of representational and abstract. The poetic arrangements found in Wari textiles frequently represent divine mythological beings cleverly masked in abstraction. The very act of weaving served a divine function; providing the instruments of worship which communicate religious sentiment through images born of a state of meditation.

     Torch-bearer of ancient dyeing recipes, master of the loom, Oscar Huarancca has dedicated the last six years solely to the creation of the weavings displayed here. Since his boyhood, Huarancca's loom has been his temple and his home. He has taken his extensive knowledge all over Peru as a teacher of weaving and dyeing, steadfast in converting young artists to the endangered way of natural dyeing. He has replicated over three hundred colors found in Pre-Columbian textiles, and has discovered many new ones while experimenting with rare minerals he discovered on his treks. His recent collaboration with designer Evan Young-Walentine has marked the expansion of his palette to several thousand colors by means of combining two different colors into one single yarn.

     Young-Walentine, also known as March Young, is a painter and designer who studied philosphy of art at Vassar College and cultural anthropology at the University of Peru. His designing challenges the boundaries of Andean textile art with a constructive style that creates depth through layering of historical symbolism.

Gallery of Current Tapestries

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