Pre-Columbian, Peru, South Coast, Nazca, ca. 100–600 CE. A long rectangular panel woven in warm polychrome, its field filled edge to edge with broad stepped zigzags that climb diagonally across the cloth in gold, deep red, and near-black brown. The design is built entirely from interlocked rectangular blocks, each color advancing one notch at a time so the bands read as terraced staircases rather than smooth chevrons. Fibers are likely camelid wool, dyed with plant and mineral colorants and worked in tapestry technique on a warp-weighted loom. Textiles of this scale served as mantles, hangings, or burial wrappings among South Coast peoples, where cloth ranked among the highest forms of wealth. The panel has been sewn to a cloth backing and mounted on a wooden stretcher for display. Size: 26" W x 77.75" H (66.0 cm W x 197.5 cm H).

Nazca weavers inherited the technical vocabulary of the Paracas Necropolis workshops that preceded them on Peru's arid south coast, and the same desert conditions that preserved Paracas mummy bundles account for the survival of cloth like this. Textiles were the region's premier prestige medium, exceeding ceramics and metalwork in labor invested and in social value; a single large mantle could consume months of spinning and dyeing before a thread reached the loom.

The stepped-fret and terraced zigzag belongs to the deep Andean geometric repertoire, a motif carried across millennia and media, from Chavin stonework to Inca tunics. Readings vary: agricultural terraces, mountain profiles, water channels, the interlocking halves of a dualist cosmology. Whatever its intended sense, the pattern's construction is dictated by the loom itself, where color changes fall on discrete warp and weft intersections and curves are structurally impossible.

Provenance: Private NYC. collection Ex. E.H. Merrin Gallery Inc., NYC., 1980’s.

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Item #73242

Some minor staining and very minor imperfections mostly near the center of the panel and one corner, otherwise very good condition.