Shamans, Supernaturals & Animal Spirits: Mythic Figures From the Ancient Andes

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Three-Dimensional Textile Adornment
Flowering Tree with Nesting Birds
Chimú culture
AD 1000-1476
Camelid wool; wrapping, looping,
knotting, embroidery
12" x 5½"
Literature
Taullard 1949, 58.
Amano Museum 1979a, fig. 267.
Several of the most intricate known Chimú textiles, which are richly worked
with assemblages of tassels, medallions, volumetric ornaments and fringes, feature
agricultural and plant imagery. This is a common theme in Andean iconography, of
course. But generally the focus is on the edible fruits, roots, seeds and beans, rather than
on an entire tree or shrub, as in this elaborate tassel.
With charming naturalism, a fruiting plant is represented in three simultaneous stages of
bloom. The branches are laden with shaped elements depicting the flower bud emerging
from the corolla, the open flower and the mature or ripening fruit. Flat oval motifs
possibly depict lucuma (egg fruit), a Peruvian native. A couple of toucans or parrots (a
mating pair?) are shown nesting at the top of the tree.
In fact, the combination of motifs evokes a fertility myth told in the central highlands,
which was recorded in the 17th-century Huarochirí Manuscript. In it, the Andean
creator god Cuniraya is said to have been rebuffed by the weaver Cavillaca. But the deity
seduced and impregnated her anyway by transforming himself into a bird perched in a
lucuma tree, and dropping his seed into its globular orange fruit, which Cavillaca picked
and ate.
Whether or not the myth was already known to the Chimú as well, this entire emblem
can be regarded as an icon of fertility.
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