Pre-Columbian Pachacamac Textile Panel - Oracle Spiders

**Originally Listed At $500**

Pre-Columbian, Central / South Coast Peru, Pachacamac culture, ca. 1000 CE. A lovely fragmentary textile panel comprised of tightly-woven camelid (alpaca or llama wool) fibers in hues of cream, fuchsia, crimson, lavender, emerald-green, marigold, and jet-black. Atop the light ground are a quartet of abstract polychrome arachnids with bulbous bodies, heart-shaped heads, bent legs with small claws, and a myriad of eyes across the heads and bodies. The ancients of Peru utilized spiders and insectile soothsayers - hence the name "oracle spiders" - by letting them scurry across ceremonial textiles so shamans could interpret their movements and divine the future. Mounted atop fabric-wrapped wooden stretchers. Size (textile): 13.375" L x 3.2" W (34 cm x 8.1 cm); size (frame): 15.875" L x 7.875" W (40.3 cm x 20 cm).

Provenance: private Hawaii, USA collection; ex-private Drimmer collection, Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1960-1990

All items legal to buy/sell under U.S. Statute covering cultural patrimony Code 2600, CHAPTER 14, and are guaranteed to be as described or your money back.

A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids.

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#144365
Condition Report: Light fraying and loosening to some interior and peripheral threads, with light fading and staining to original pigmentation. Iconography and colors are still visible and vivid.