OK, my Opus is finished and ready to print! BUT….let’s go back a bit.
When I was researching tapestries, before I had decided on my own Opus, I came across a very different tapestry - the Paracas Textile:
Take a close look at those figures on the edges:
Every tiny feature - fingers and toes, eyes and nose - has been knit. By hand. Actually, it’s not knitting - it’s some technique called double looping - but similar to knitting.
(Above) The back of each figure has been worked just as carefully as the front.
The dress and ornaments reflect what was being worn by people at that time. The Paracas Textile gives an accurate record. Look at the gold ornaments on the left. Do you see the ‘face’ design seen on the gold nose ornaments? The same design can be seen on the knitted nose ornament on the right. This accuracy allows scientists to study the textile for all sorts of information. The camel (llama?) figure below shows what type of goods were being traded. I fuzzed out the image around the animal so you see it better.
Nasca, Mantle (“The Paracas Textile“), 100-300 C.E., cotton, camelid fiber…..One of the most extraordinary masterpieces of the pre-Columbian Americas is a nearly 2,000-year-old cloth from the South Coast of Peru, which has been in the Brooklyn Museum of Art since 1938.
Despite the textile’s small size (it measures about two by five feet), it contains a vast amount of information about the people who lived in ancient Peru; and despite its great age and delicacy, its colors are brilliant, and tiny details amazingly intact. This is due to the arid environment of southern Peru along the Pacific shore…..
In the ancient cemeteries on the Paracas Peninsula, the dead were wrapped in layers of cloth and clothing into “mummy bundles.”
Early reports claimed that this cloth came from the Paracas peninsula, so it was called “THE Paracas textile,” to mark its excellence and uniqueness. Currently, scholars have revised this provenance, and now attribute the cloth to the related, but slightly later Nasca culture…...Recently, the Brooklyn Museum has posted high quality, close-up views of this masterpiece online, allowing viewers to scrutinizes the textile, thread by thread https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/48296 (Yes! you can just click on the link and see every figure in glorious detail - isn’t that great?)
Because the central cloth and the border have different color palettes, they may have been created at different times. The triple-layer border has colorful outer veneers of wool “crossed-looping” that envelop inner cotton cores of looping or weaving…...On the border, a parade of 90 figures is linked together on their lower bodies, which are worked two-dimensionally against a red background…..Each figure’s upper body and head is constructed as a separate unit, and attached to the woven strip. The upper bodies are worked in bas-relief, with some parts projecting outwards from the plane of the fabric. Tiny components (like leaves and feathers) were worked as separate pieces and then attached, giving a wonderful three-dimensionality and liveliness to the figures, especially because they mingle and overlap…..Most of the animals and plants that appear can be tied to species still found on the South Coast, and many human figures wear or carry items that directly relate to the archaeological record…..really, go to the website - https://smarthistory.org/the-paracas-textile/ - and read the whole thing.
Anyhow…I was researching tapestries while I was still busy stitching away at Fairy Tales, Part 3 (with it’s center of American whiteness and border of colorful ‘other’). So… thinking about Paracas figures, while sewing this….
…and I realized that the Paracas Textile could be combined with Opus Angelicanum in the same sort of juxaposition….
The embroidered Euro-centric images surrounded by crowds of knitted figures! Of course, the border wouldn’t be just Peruvian figures - I could research figures from all over the world! And I could have them interacting with the Angelicanum! It should only take the rest of my life to complete. Next week, you’ll see the many other figures that I found.