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Narrative

Bought from Dionisia Marca Quispe, a young mother. Dionisia had woven a narrow band to teach herself the unfamiliar weave structure before beginning on the belt.

Iconographic Meaning

The range of motifs refers to local geography and landmarks, ecology, fecundity as well as luck. The six part circle refers to the division of land into six sections on Taquile and the rotation of crops and fallow periods.

History Of Use

Warp-faced fabrics with three or four selvedges are woven by women but the fabrics, the techniques, structures and some of the motifs have pre-Conquest antecedents. This type of textile conveys the most information about an individual's ethnicity, sex, age, status and particular history. The women weave near the house compound particularly during July and August between the seasons for harvesting and planting. They weave for themselves, for their family and for sale to tourists. It is desirable on Taquile to have new belts for each fiesta, although most weavers cannot keep up to this ideal.

Specific Techniques

Commercially spun synthetic yarns are overtwisted in s direction. Weave structures are the following: 1-plain colour areas are warp faced plain weave. 2-narrow figurative designs; complementary-warp weave with 3-span floats aligned in alternate pairs with an irregular (abbabaab) warping order (3/1 horizontal colour changes and diagonals of 2-span floats). 3- stripe with squares; float weave derived from turned 2/1 horizontal herringbone with floats forming squares.

Cultural Context

women's weaving

Description

Loom (part a) with partially finished belt, 10.7 cm wide, predominantly red, white and green. The design consists of three patterned bands with figurative and geometric motifs. Woven section lashed to loom bar and twisted warps loop over loom bar at the other end. Shed roll (part b) in position between two layers of warps. One heddle bar with string loops extends full width and two sets of string heddles are tied on the warps in the three pattern bands. The red weft is wrapped on a stick. Accompanying the loom are two roughly whittled and tapered pegs (parts b and c), a bone pick (d), six cylindrical pieces of wood (parts d,e,f,i,h,j) all of varying size.