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Description

Wool sling consisting of an orange, purple, green, yellow and red braid with five tassels spaced along the length and a centrally positioned pouch. The pouch is composed of four woven strips which have a stitched netting between them. One end has a braided finger loop.

History Of Use

Used by men and women for dancing at carnival, a moveable fiesta in February or March. A fruit like an apple, called 'ningrello', is put in the pouch and it is swung over the head with the fruit giving weight to it. Dance slings appear to derive from slings used in hunting or warfare to hurl projectiles. The dance sling is smaller, more elaborately decorated and has a modified pocket. Many Andean communities use slings in their dances but the style of the sling is distinctive in each community. The tassels are called fluicos; the braids are called simbasqa.

Narrative

Bought from Elena Quispe Flores in Taquile who sold it for the maker, her adoptive mother Teresa Flores Huatta. Teresa made it during the 1950's and had been using it for dancing in the Carnival Fiesta right up to present.

Specific Techniques

The yarns of the original sling are sheep's wool and alpaca fibre, hand spun z and plied 2 s. Dyed with chemical dyes. The orange yellow and magenta yarns in the tassels are commercial yarns, z spun and plied 3 s, and were added some years after the sling was made. The sling is a square braid, obliquely interlaced with 12 threads in an over 3 under 3 interlacing order. The finger loop is briaded on 6 ends and varies irregularly between a flat and square braid. The pouch is composed of 4 strips of weft-faced plain weave woven on the same threads used in the braiding. The strips are joined by netted sections of irregular stitching. Separate cut yarns are mounted on a cord and stitched to the braid in 5 places to form the tassels.

Cultural Context

carnival dancing

Item History

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