Mantle or Hanging

1480–1635 (radiocarbon date, 95.4% probability)

Mantle or Hanging, 1480–1635 (radiocarbon date, 95.4% probability). Peru, North Coast, Chimú style, 1200-1460s. Cotton; plain weave, brocaded and complex alternating gauze with 3 or 5 shots of plain weave between gauze shots; overall: 162.5 x 272 cm (64 x 107 1/16 in.); mounted: 177.8 x 287 cm (70 x 113 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Norman O. Stone and Ella A. Stone Memorial Fund 2005.5.1 This garment embodies an important principle of the Chimú textile aesthetic: a love of combining different textures, some dense and sculptural and others so open and airy they are nearly invisible. (The hand-spun yarns are only .1 to .2 millimeters in diameter.) It also elegantly articulates the simplified, spare visual vocabulary that the Chimú favored, here geometric motifs. The Chimú forged an empire that thrived until the 1460s, when the Inka incorporated it into their own imperial domain.