ANCIENT PERUVIAN CLOTHS 



393 



for some years, by an averac;e of one 

 hundred and fifty art students each 

 month, who carry away with them for 

 future use copies in black and white and 

 in colors of these color schemes and 

 designs. 



Aside from their value to artists and 

 art students, these old Peruvian textiles 

 claim our admiration from a technical 

 point of view. This side of the subject, 

 although of very great interest, will not 

 be taken up here, as it has been treated 

 in a paper l)y Mr. M. D. C. Crawford, 

 published by the Museum in its anthro- 

 pological series. Mr. Crawford is in- 

 terested in the textile business, and 

 is familiar with the history of textiles, 

 and with the materials and machinery 

 used in the processes of spinning and 

 wea^'ing•. The wonderfully complex ma- 

 chines of the present day but repeat the 

 processes formerly performed by the 

 weaver's fingers. The finest textiles 

 known have been made by hand; ma- 

 chines have not made fabrics more per- 

 fect. Mr. Crawford's paper will be the 

 first to treat the prehistoric Peru\'ian 

 cloths from a purely technical point of 

 view. 



We do not know the age of the 

 Peruvian fabrics. They probably be- 

 long to different epochs, and while a 

 part of them may not greatly antedate 

 the historical period (1532), others are 

 undoubtedly of a very much greater age, 

 perhaps scAeral thousand years older. 

 This assumption is reasonable and in ac- 

 cordance with what we know of the de- 



velopment of other arts and industries. 



All things connected with old Peru 

 are associated in the popular mind with 

 the Inca. 



Now the truth of the matter is that 

 the coast region did not come under 

 the Inca sway imtil about one hun- 

 dred to one hundred and fifty years 

 l)efore the conciuest, and most of these 

 fabrics were made many centuries be- 

 fore that time, ^"arious localities in- 

 cluded within the boundaries of ancient 

 Peru, lia\'e furnished us with specimens 

 of this cloth; but by far the greater 

 number of specimens comes from the 

 coast region, which is largely a desert 

 of dry, nitrous sanrl, well adapted to 

 their preservation. So well are the 

 fabrics preserved that many of the pieces 

 are as strong, and their colors apparently 

 as bright, as when taken from the primi- 

 tive loom. The ancient inhabitants 

 lived in the fertile valleys of the rivers 

 flowing from the Cordillera to the 

 Pacific, and buried their dead in the 

 desert sand near, and it is from these 

 graves that the best-preserved specimens 

 come. It was a very long step indeed 

 from the first attempts at weaving to the 

 production of these beautiful fabrics. 



The designs, and something of the 

 textures, of the Museum's mummy cloths 

 are shown in the illustrations, but the 

 wonderful color schemes, which never 

 fail to delight the artist's eye, are all but 

 lost, as they always must be when 

 photography is relied upon for their 

 reproduction. 



