Very brightly coloured poncho, heavily embroidered with acrylic yarn and cotton embroidery thread, mainly purple and pink, with numerous other colours, on off-white cotton backing. Main design is a stretched oval running from the front edge to back edge around neck, embroidered mainly in acrylic yarn in an abstract star-like design. The negative spaces outside the circle are embroidered with smaller floral designs, a person and two birds. Poncho has a red and blue cotton collar added, with various types of lace and metallic gold ribbon sewn onto it. Sides are stitched except for small slits for arms.

Square-shaped shirt made from one piece of rectangular cotton cloth stitched up the sides, with openings left at the top for the arms and a squared neck opening cut in the centre. The upper portion of the shirt has red, brown, blue, purple, orange and green geometric designs embroidered onto horizontal woven bands of purple, orange and green and has been pleated on both sides of the neck opening. The lower portion is a natural cream colour with bands of black and purple across the top and is gathered at the bottom of the pleat darts. Two strips of red ribbon with shiny gold circles edge the sleeves and neck.

Two piece shawl or llijlla woven with wide bands called pampakuna of indigo and multi-striped geometric panels at the sides of each section forming a double width central panel. Other colors are burgundy red, green, yellow white, black and purple. The tubular edge binding or ribete in burgundy with ojo de gato (or diamond shaped) lozenges in blue and white.

Frank Sherman Benson Fund

A man's two-piece striped poncho. Stripes with geometric patterns have widths that are medium and wide, while stripes with solid colors have widths that are narrow. Because of the textile having been washed, natural white alpaca fleece has been changed to a light pink in places. Neck opening and poncho selvages have the same sewn-on edge of braid binding and fringe. Predominant colors of object are dark red and white with stripes of green, yellow and black. At the center of each of the two pieces that make up the poncho are a trio of large parallal diamond-patterned stripes with a narrower patterned stripe on each side. Narrow solid-colored stripes alternate with patterned stripes. The sewn-on braiding edge has diamond designs in yellow, green, dark red, and white; woven into the braid is a bright fringe of pink green, orange, red, white, black, brown and purple. To create curved edges on the poncho, each of the four corners has been sewn down.The object is complete and its overall condition is good. It was purchased unused. Condition: excellent.

Frank Sherman Benson Fund

Frank Sherman Benson Fund

Men's waist cloth made up of four panels of warp faced cloth stitched together vertically with hems at each end on opposing sides. The rust-red, cream and brown of the hand spun cotton warp ikat patterns are natural dye while the narrow blue and green supplementary warps are commercial dye and mercerized cotton.

Knee-length lime green robe with long sleeves has looped buttoning from the neck across upper chest to below one arm and down the side. Bordering the entire robe , including sleeve cuffs, are wide panels of black and blue fabric decorated with colourful needle worked cutouts, wavy lengths of yellow cording, blue and green fabric overlay, ribbons of gold and silver threads, and a red trim. The back is covered with overlapping feather shapes of black, brown and blue fabric, each trimmed in blue, yellow or red and with needle worked exotic bird or flower design in the centre. There is a one piece lining of unbleached cotton.

Two piece costume consisting of a heavy wool hooded coat (a) and pants (b). Hood is checked design woven in pink and dark brown with fringes of purple and red and green. Body of jacket is a red and beige patterned wool embellished with many rows of fringe in purple, red and green, purple and gold and red, burgundy and white. The coat opens at the front and closes with four plastic buttons. Wool leggings have been sewn onto cropped green polyester/viscose trousers with button-up fly.