**Originally Listed At $200**

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Huari/Wari culture, ca. 500 to 1000 CE. A long, thin textile strip with five panels of condor motifs set on bright red backgrounds, separated from one another by bright yellow panels. The condor (Vultur gryphus) is the largest bird in the Andes, with a wingspan up to 10 feet! These powerful birds inspired the inhabitants of the Andes and seem to serve symbolically as the lords of the sky; in modern Inca culture, they also symbolize the mountain spirits and the Inca themselves. Size: 19" L x 1.1" W (48.3 cm x 2.8 cm)

Textiles were some of the most valuable items in Huari culture and they probably exacted them as tribute from the peoples they conquered. This makes it difficult for archaeologists to identify where these beautiful objects were originally woven, because they travelled so much around the Huari Empire. It seems that Huari textiles, like the Inca that followed them, were woven on a wide, rectangular frame loom. They were warped on the short direction so the warp would run horizontally when worn as a tunic. Most of these are made with either white cotton or camelid fiber (alpaca) or some combination of both. The textiles that are preserved today are often from the desert areas between the Pacific Coast and the Andes; the Huari capital, in the highlands, was too wet to preserve cloth through the centuries, and as a result, textile fragments are quite rare.

Provenance: Ex-Slavin Collection, acquired in Peru & Bolivia, 1971-1972

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#118696

Extensive wear with some losses as shown.