Cotton Ball Item Number: 3263/87 from the MOA: University of British Columbia
Mass of unprocessed cotton bolls. Majority are brown and red-brown; the remaining are natural white. Stems and seeds are caught throughout cotton.
A layer of unprocessed cotton bolls, such as these, was commonly used as padding for central coast mummy bundles from the Inca Period (1430-1570).
Collected in Peru before the 1970s by Ina VanStan, a Professor of Textiles and Clothing at the Florida State College for Women (Florida State University) from the 1940s to c. 1966. VanStan later gifted her collection to the donor. A large amount of the donation was used for teaching at the University of Alberta while others were mainly small study fragments.