Technique and Form in Huari-Style Tapestry Tunics: The Andean Artist, A.D. 500-800

Andean Huari-style tapestry tunics constitute one of the most expressive art forms of the ancient Americas and a high point in the longest, most creative textile tradition in the world. Their dual function as official art worn by, and subsequently buried over, highland state representatives on the coast is explored. In specific, the treatment of color is presented in order to shed light on the issue of artistic contribution to state-directed design. Technical description traces the process from the preparation of an estimated 6.5 miles of dyed thread per tunic through the weaving of two complex coloristic compositions from which the tunic is ultimately constructed. Technical data suggest that virtuoso textile artists collaborated in a workshop to create "overdetermined" cloth that elevated its wearer to sacred status in life and beyond. The innovative "width-wise warp" is found to be integral to the presentation of a larger-than-life personage (and possibly to the promotion of the distinctive highland physique). Formal analysis reveals a series of independent regular shape and color design rules systematically interrupted by intentional deviations and anomalies. Color variation in particular is found to be a diagnostic feature of the Huari-style composition. Each tunic demonstrates a unique combination of formal choices. Such design standardization tempered by idiosyncratic variations on the rules strongly suggests widespread creative, individualistic interaction with limited iconographic possibilities. Color treatment can be shown to create a closed, self-referential system that itself becomes subject matter. Artistic goals and processes may have dovetailed with those of the state to transform the wearer into an esoteric symbol. Formal patterning can be shown to present the Huari state as the mediator of natural and human chaos through social order. The projection of this power through color in textiles represents a uniquely Andean expression of artistic, social and cosmological realities.