Editor’s note: ATA is hoping to resume tours, like the one described here by Marcia, in 2022. We are working closely with our tour partners in Peru to access the COVID situation and how and when we can conduct ATA tours safely. If you are on the waiting list for tours, we’ll be sending you a questionnaire about potential safety measures. If you are interested in a future tour, contact Pam Art at pam.art@icloud.com Three years later, my friends and I are still talking about our Andean Textile Arts (ATA) tour of Peru. In ten short days, our group was exposed to Peruvian culture as expressed in the spinning, weaving, and other fiber arts, as well as the natural and … Read More
The Art of Four-Selvaged Cloth
The recent ATA TextileTalk on “The Andean Textile Tradition of Four-Selvaged Cloth” by Elena Phipps, PhD, highlights one of the amazing technical features of Andean woven textiles, something that casual textile lovers who are not weavers themselves often overlook. Many of the finest traditional Andean textiles are woven to completion on all four edges, producing a finished textile which has no cut edges—it is simply untied from the loom. Weavers in the Andean highlands have been creating beautiful, uncut, four-selvage textiles for thousands of years. Such uncut textiles have a deep connection to the worldview and spirituality of Andean and other indigenous cultures of the Americas. This amazing weaving technique, virtually unknown in cultures beyond the Americas, is possible with traditional Andean looms … Read More