Mantle or Hanging (1480–1635 (radiocarbon date, 95.4% probability)): Art, History and Details

Mantle or Hanging (1480–1635 (radiocarbon date, 95.4% probability)) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This garment embodies an important principle of the Chimú textile aesthetic: a love of combining different textures, some dense and sculptural and others so open and airy they are nearly invisible. (The hand-spun yarns are only .1 to .2 millimeters in diameter.) It also elegantly articulates the simplified, spare visual vocabulary that the Chimú favored, here geometric motifs.

Object facts

• Title: Mantle or Hanging
• Date: 1480–1635 (radiocarbon date, 95.4% probability)
• Culture: Peru, North Coast, Chimú style, 1200-1460s
• Type: Textile
• Technique: cotton; plain weave, brocaded and complex alternating gauze with 3 or 5 shots of plain weave between gauze shots
• Dimensions: Overall: 162.5 x 272 cm (64 x 107 1/16 in.); Mounted: 177.8 x 287 cm (70 x 113 in.)
• Collection: T - Pre-Columbian
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 2005.5.1

A detail from the museum

The Chimú forged an empire that thrived until the 1460s, when the Inka incorporated it into their own imperial domain.

Collection credit

Norman O. Stone and Ella A. Stone Memorial Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Rowe, Ann Pollard, and John P. O'Neill. Costumes & featherwork of the Lords of Chimor: textiles from Peru's north coast. 1984.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.