Today we began the morning with a lecture on the Moche and Chimu civilizations. Both are located on the north coast but are not contemporaneous as the former existed in the Early Intermediate period, and the latter in the Late Intermediate period. Once again, great places to start or just compare with the adobe works at Pachacamac. The relief wall decorations on the Moche temples are incredible and still intact at places, even with visible traces of brightly colored paint. Also the sea life motifs in Chan Chan are comparable to the fish friezes at Pachacamac.
Next, we spent some time learning about twill fabric. Twills are woven structures that create diagonal and diamond shapes (like you can see in your jeans). We created a repeating chevron twill and a diamond twill pattern which is very common in Andean textiles, specifically on those that are more utilitarian with minimal decoration.
The rest of the day was spent learning and creating a brocade pattern. We both chose to design trinagular birds inspired by those that we have seen in large quantities throughout the collection and that we saw today when looking at Chimu fabrics. There are a few motifs like these triangular birds that are seen in cultures all up and down the coast.
Before today I (Jeanette) was very confused as to how brocade was supplemental to the weft without being an embroidery but then I learned that the supplemental weft is woven at the same time (from a separate bobbin) as the weft and follows the existing structure of the ground fabric (unlike embroidery which is added after weaving and independant of the structure). Being able to re-create these techniques on my loom has helped me tremendously in the understanding of the structure of textiles.
We also experimented with alpaca yarns and learned a lot of about the difficulties caused by its fuzziness and tendency to cling, and obscure designs.
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