David Paly’s breathtaking collection of ikat textiles began with a single Andean poncho and grew to be world-class. Visitors to the 2023 exhibit Ikat: A World of Compelling Cloth at the Seattle Art Museum saw many of the pieces in Paly’s collection, and a number of his pieces are currently on view in the exhibit Irresistible: The Global Patterns of Ikat at The Textile Museum in Washington, D.C. Like many of us in the ATA community, I’ve collected a few Andean textiles from travels and ATA auctions, but after seeing the Seattle exhibit and reading the book cataloging his collection, I was curious to know more about what motivates a serious collector like Paly and how collecting can help preserve traditional textile techniques. Here’s what I found out.
Paly’s interest in collecting began early in life. “As I read about art and read art catalogs as a young adult, I wanted to be a serious collector: someone who builds a comprehensive group of objects that have meaning and quality.” His textile collection started with an ikat poncho he bought in Riobamba, Ecuador, in 1976 while traveling in South America. He was intrigued by the ikat technique and bought a few more pieces while traveling in Asia. Then, he says, “The book The Dyer’s Art came out. I read it and realized that this was an amazing tradition. So, I decided that ikat would be my chosen art form for a comprehensive collection.”
Paly explains that collecting is a widespread and ancient human pastime. “Historically, men have been collectors, for socioeconomic reasons—Freud had theories about this—although women are more common collectors these days. To me, a serious collector has a discrete concentration on one or more themes, and he or she tries to acquire a complete set of best examples, pieces that can show every aspect of it in a dedicated or disciplined way.” While he’s always maintained a certain focus and discipline in his collecting, Paly admits “I have occasionally strayed from it at different times and in different directions.”
Paly’s advice to other collectors? Have a theme to your collection. “My theme, broadly, is what are the sources of creativity. Ikat is a paradigm to ask that question. It’s a simple technique, on a fundamental level, but tedious and laborious to execute well. Why does it happen in some places but not others? These are abstract questions with no clear answers, but the collection provides a lot to admire and a lot of food for thought.” As for using your collection, he says if you’re buying something, enjoy it with respect. “I wore that first Andean poncho that I bought, but a lot of textiles were made for ceremonial use. I don’t consider these pieces mine because the context in which they were made is not something I am a part of. I feel honored to be able to see them and enjoy them and to preserve them for the future. I treat them with respect as objects.”
Although Paly has collected very few contemporary pieces, he acknowledges that collecting can play a role in encouraging the preservation of textile traditions. “In the past, people made these exquisite textiles for personal and ritual use in societies where time was not valued in monetary terms, and the time and materials were affordable, often by barter. As time becomes valued by a metric of currency, the price of these objects rarely rises to a level where it’s affordable for artisans to produce them. I’m so admiring of people like the communities in [the Sacred Valley] and Taquile and of NGOs that have made it their mission to support people in preserving these techniques. There are too few of those examples.”
Most of all, Paly says, collecting is fun. “There is a cycle of learning, seeking, finding, acquiring, and re-appraising the acquisition. As you re-appraise a piece, you see its faults, and maybe you upgrade. It’s emotional—there’s glee at finding a piece, euphoria at acquiring it, and sometimes let-down at having it. It’s the process more than the actual object that creates this incessant search for satisfaction. That said, there are as many pieces that I regret missing as ones I regret buying.”
These are wise words of encouragement to us small collectors: on my next trip to the Andes, I plan to come home with more textiles and fewer regrets.
You can see ikat pieces from The David Paly Collection on display at The Textile Museum in Washington D.C. through December 21, 2024, and you can see and learn about ikat traditions in the Andes and around the world in his book, Global Ikat: Roots and Routes of a Textile Technique.
