Laura Anne Lewis Art & Craft of the Early Americas September 29, 2008 Natural Dyes of the Ancient Andes The life of a typical textile artist in the Ancient Andes was full of collecting fiber of several kinds, washing, carding, dyeing, spinning and weaving. These fibers were exclusively dyed with natural plant pigments that provided the incredibly vivid and saturated colors that gave the textiles of the Ancient Andes their decorative appeal. Working in several different fiber based techniques including weaving, the native people of early South America wove intricate tapestries out of several types of camelid wool and cotton they grew. Buried beneath the dry climate of the Pre-Columbian region over hundreds of years, these resurrected tapestries were understood as being the remarkably well preserved art standard of the time period. Of the tribes that existed between the years c. 500 bc - 1500 ad, the craft of textile work has been heralded as a lavish and holy art form. Simple cotton weavings were worn by most of the workers and village people, but the highly prized and very intricately woven work of the various Andean tribe's women were reserved for those whom they considered worthy of such a prize. Leaders such as high priests or decorated warriors were often expected to wear the fruits of these intensely labored women's hands. The reason behind such a highly praised art form is because of the incredible amount of effort put into each piece. In fact, it was not considered unbelievable for a piece to have a literal lifetime's worth of labor placed on a particular specimen. Often depicting the life of several different types of tribes people, gods, animals, and sacred gods or people who had several animal attributes, weavings became a way for women of the villages to express themselves through a sacred art form. Many of these pieces depicted an art technique several of the tribes became infatuated with called "contour rivalry". Contour Rivalry depicts a form who can be read as several different figures entwined together, often resulting in an image that may have several different possible visual interpretations of the design. The women of the Southern Coastal Karwa tribe commonly painted dye onto their simple cotton weavings post finishing. These particular artists repeatedly painted figures of women with eyes for breasts and mouths with sharp teeth for vaginas, for example. Any piece of traditional textile art starts off with a raw fiber of some sort. Whether a type of camelid wool or cotton, collecting of the particular fiber is all done manually. An animal is sheared or a cotton is harvested, thus beginning the life of the spiritual fabric. The raw fiber is then washed of all the debris or matter that may have clung to it including the natural oils of the animal or plant. Flecks and pieces of caked on dung or mud from the animal, and of course the thorny hulls of the cotton bud are picked and washed out. The entire process is an arduous task no doubt performed by a collective and collaborative effort. After being carded, which is the undertaking of brushing the material into a smooth and lofty product prepared for spinning, the material can finally be dyed. Over the hundreds of years the Ancient Andes were populated by the tribes existing before the Spanish arrived, wool and cotton used in weavings were dyed exclusively with plant matter. Many different colors were achieved through a process called mordanting. Before a fiber can be dyed naturally, it must be prepared by having a mineral infused with the fiber through this mordanting technique. At the Nasca excavation sites large pots containing magnesium sulphate, or epsom salt, was found which is a common mordant used even to this day. Basically, a fiber was boiled with the mineral or set in hot water and left for however many days required in order to mordant the fiber completely. Once mordanted, the mineral particle in the fiber can now actually grab onto the dye particle, speaking in a purely microscopic point of view. Natural dyes can essentially be put into two separate groups. There are dyes that can be set without mordanting and dyes that absolutely require some form of mordanting. Natural plant matter like Black Walnut and Indigo, both of which many tribes of the Andes used frequently, do not require mordanting. However, dye matter such as cochineal and madder root require some form of mordanting otherwise the dye will just stream right out of the fiber when pulled from the dye vat. A dye will set a different shade depending on the type of mineral used to mordant with. For instance, using a large iron pot will give the color of the dye matter a grey or darker overtone. While using a copper pot will provide for a brighter, more iridescent color. Black Walnut, or Juglands Nigra as it is known in the scientific world, is a plant treasured for it's wide array of brown tones without the lengthy task of mordanting. Another exceptional attribute of this tree is its economical value. Not only are the leaves useful, but the husks and shells of the tree can also achieve the same potency of color. With this plant, different colors can be achieved when different fibers and/or mordants are used. For instance, with unmordanted cotton or mordanted wool one may achieve a light golden brown to dark brown color that possesses an almost mercerized color appeal or internal shine. With an unmordanted animal fiber such as alpaca, one can expect a natural dark grey to almost black, which is a color palette that is incredibly hard to achieve in the natural dye world. Another unmordanted dye plant used by several tribes including the Chimú and the Inca is indigo, or Indigofera. While some plants may have different color effects when using the mordanting process or not, mordanting before using indigo on any fiber has little to no effect on the end result. This unusual dye was highly regarded by these tribes specifically as having extreme mystical properties. To create a vat of indigo is an immensely challenging task because it ends up being a chemical process. Indigo naturally does not adhere to fiber or dissolve in water. Therefore, indigo dyeing requires the vat to have little to no oxygen in the mix and possess the right alkalinity. The way most tribes of the ancient Andes achieved indigo dyeing was with human urine. Urine provides both the alkalinity indigo needs, and it also ferments depleting the oxygen in the solution. Soaking the fiber in urine was also a method they used to make the color extremely vibrant and colorfast. The plant must be harvested and ground into a fine powder. Once the vat is mixed in with some parts stale urine, usually left to set up for months, and some parts water; the chemical reaction after adding the ground indigo powder turns the mixture into a strong smelling and viscous liquid. The surface of this liquid has a green, silvery, reflective finish and looks much like the skin of a scaleless fish. Once a fiber such as yarn or a weaving is dropped into the vat and pulled out, the result is at first a greenish blue color. The most fascinating part about indigo dye vats, and what made the dye itself so cherished and revered to the native people, is that right before one's very eyes, the fiber will change to a deep dark blue denim color almost instantly. This reaction happens when the indigo in the fiber that has been initially revoked of oxygen is exposed to the open air. The oxygen and nitrogen of the atmosphere changes the greenish blue color to that deep dark blue color adored by the Inca and Chimú tribes. This indigo plant and many other unmordanted dye-plants like it, lend themselves to extremely washable and colorfast vibrancy. Cochineal beetles are a dye material that requires mordanting. Red plant dyes are almost solely animal extracted and in the pre-Columbian region the cochineal beetles who provide one of the most vibrant reds were collected from cacti and grass. The cochineal bug was and is still a very rare dye type in South America. A beetle prized for the vibrant red colors it's scaled body produces when dried and ground, the cochineal can be developed and harvested much like a plant. The colors they provide are a brilliant red to scarlet color and sometimes purple, depending on the mordant used. These colors are actually remarkably lasting. The bug is so tiny, however, that it was an opulent resource. It took so much to create one dye-bath, textiles dyed with this specific beetle were reserved for the truly holy leaders. Once collected, cochineal bugs were dried and ground into a fine powder. This powder was then boiled down with the fiber after being mordanted. Copper Sulfate mordants usually achieved through boiling fiber materials in a copper vessel provide the brightest scarlets with an almost orange tinge. Several different types of mordanting will yield an array of colors as well as dipping the fiber into an acid or alkaline immediately after being dyed. These dyed fibers were woven into beautiful tapestries using the most rudimentary and yet astonishingly progressive array of tools. One of the tools used to actually spin the wool or cotton down was an either top or bottom whorl spindle. The spindle is made up of one disk shape at either the top or bottom of a dowel rod that has a hook of some sort fastened or drilled into the top or bottom of the dowel rod. This spindle is used then to spin the raw alpaca fiber into a thin string creating one "ply". Once a significant amount of fiber is spun up into several plies, the strings are then plied together to create a thicker and stronger yarn. Then, using what is called a "backstrap loom", women were able to keep weaving their beautiful forms and still maintain a level of relative portability. Known also as a rigid heddle loom, backstrap looms are tied around the artist's waist and a strong vertical post like a tree or staff. Employing this method, weavings can later be folded or rolled up with work still in progress. Tension is provided by simply leaning backward or forward with the work hanging free between the artist and the post. Some textiles were embellished with extremely intricate embroidery that was built up layer by layer until the desired image was achieved. This embroidery technique was mastered by the Paracas tribe of the Early Intermediate Period. If a shaman design was chosen, the outline of the character was drawn on with a running stitch. Then the body, face, and clothing were all filled in with a small filler stitch much like the dashes of the running stitch outline. This technique allowed for a basic solid colored woven setting and allowed the artist to create a design that set itself apart from the background. With these fundamental tools, people of the ancient tribes of the Andean region were able to make beautiful and elaborate weavings and textiles. The array of colors displayed in the artwork is a testament to the incredible intelligence and respect the indigenous tribes had for the land and their culture. Using the typical materials they had that grew naturally around them, they created an incredibly diverse and assorted palette of hues that are experiencing a revival in these modern times. With the toxicity and unreliability of synthetic dyes swamping the current market modern cultures are forgetting the ways of the people before them. Slowing down and understanding the way people used the method of natural dyeing to create dependable and exquisite fiber art is an inspiring and important message to spread around the world. Natural Dyes of the Ancient Andes: Bibliography Cannon, John, and Margaret Cannon. Dye Plants and Dyeing. Timber Press, Inc.. 1994. Grae, Ida. Nature's Colors: Dyes from Plants. Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1974. Antúnez de Mayolo, Kay K. "Peruvian Natural Dye Plants." Economic Botany 43.2 (1989): 181-191 Meish, Lynn A. Traditional textiles of the Andes : life and cloth in the highlands : the Jeffrey Appleby collection of Andean textiles. Thames & Hudson, 1997. Mukhopadhyay, Rajendrani. Yellow dyes in pre-Columbian Andean textiles. Analytical Chemistry, 1 March 2007, Vol. 79 Issue 5, 1771-1771. Nakamine de Wong, Olga. The Identification of Natural Dyes in Pre-Columbian Andean Textiles by Mass Spectrometry. MIT: Masters of Sciences Proposal, 1977. Stone-Miller, Rebecca. Art of the Andes: from Chavín to Inca. Thames & Hudson, 1995. Thompson, Angela. Textiles of Central and South America. Ramsbury : Crowood, 2006. |
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