Lliklla (Shoulder cloth or carrying cloth)

Cloth is made by weaving horizontal threads (called wefts) across stretched vertical threads (called warps). In this textile, which was created on a backstop loom in a community likely near Cusco, both surfaces of the textile are formed entirely from the warps. Such warp-patterned weaving lends itself to creating vertical stripes of different colors, as this example shows. Although this technique is commonly employed throughout the Andes, these two textiles in our collection (AIC 2017.79 and 2021.412) demonstrate how different communities utilize it to create different compositions and motifs.