Object Name: Panel with crowned figures bearing staffs

Artist: Unknown

Culture: Chancay or Rimac

Place of Origin: Peru, central coast

Date/Era: Late Intermediate Period, 1150 – 1450 C.E.

Medium/Materials: Natural brown cotton, warp (S-spun, Z-plied); dyed camelid hair, weft (Z-spun, S-plied); tapestry weave with slit joins and eccentric weft

Dimensions: 77 x 74 cm

Credit Line: Fowler Museum at UCLA. Gift of the Wellcome Trust.

Accession Number: X65.8730

All four selvage are preserved; there are unwoven warp ends at the top.

Wearing a double-pointed crown and large earplugs, a sign of high status, the somewhat abstracted and eccentric figures bear royal staffs. They may represent kings or composite three-fingered, three-toed mythical creatures. This lively panel appears unfinished at the top, with a section of unwoven warps; perhaps it was needed for a royal burial, and there was insufficient time to complete it. The cochineal red background was a color favored in the region, and the natural brown-colored warps, along with their spin direction (S-spun, Z-plied) was more typical of the northern coastal part of the empire of the Chimu.

Source: Elena Phipps, The Peruvian Four-Selvaged Cloth. Ancient Threads/New Directions, Fowler Museum Textile Series, No. 12, Los Angeles, 2013.

See also: Marla C. Berns, World Arts, Local Lives: The Collections of the Fowler Museum at UCLA. Fowler Museum, Los Angeles, 2014.