Chimu Textiles As I visited the Andean art collection in the Fresno Art Museum, there was a piece that caught my eye: A painted tapestry of the Chimu culture. As I learned more about the Chimu culture, I realized that there were not that many textiles from the culture in the past, and that they were quite scarce. Most of the articles and books found on Chimu artwork are primarily about their pottery and sculpture. Most of the preservation took place in the south coast instead of the north coast, where, to my surprise, some Chimu textiles were found. Chimu textiles seemed to have a greater distribution among the other Andean cultures because they were exported. Like other Andean cultures, the Chimu used natural dyes for their textiles …show more content…
Many of the tunics have the “Bird Lot” style and “Toothed Crescent Headdress” style that was aforementioned. The purpose for the styles on the tunics and other articles of clothing was perhaps to represent rank and class within the Chimu culture, or to convey knowledge of religious importance. This may have played an important part primarily due to the fact that the Chimu were conquered by the Inca empire later on. The Inca empire prized textiles, as they were indicators of class and often used to pay for other goods (Little & McAnany, pg. 106). As stated earlier, this may have also been the case in the Chimu culture, however not much information is known about the Chimu textiles as much as the Inca textiles. Although the Chimu were conquered by the Inca, the Chimu and Inca textiles are easier to tell apart. The Chimu textiles had more embroidery compared to the Inca, who used much less embroidery. The Chimu also used painting on their textiles, as well as brocade. The styles of the Chimu resembled the Lambayeque a bit more than the Inca. However, the Chimu designs were basically borrowed in the Inca culture. In fact, when the Inca conquered the Chimu, they adopted a lot of the Chimu textile designed and implemented them onto their pottery (Little & McAnany, pg.