The only colored decoration on the Chincha domestic cloths is in the
form of stripes. This section presents an analysis of the types found
on thirty-odd specimens.
Stripes in this sample group either border the edge of the cloth or
make an allover pattern. With the exception of four cloths, the
stripes are warpwise of the materials; these four have stripes both
warpwise and weftwise, and thus may be classified as plaids. Edge
stripes occur in combination with an allover strip pattern in specimen
16-1287 and in combination with plaid in specimen 4-3973d (pl. 6,f).
There are no cloths crossbanded only with colored wefts.
Apparently there was no preference as to the texture most appropriate
for patterning by stripes; both fine and coarse cloths are thus
decorated. For example, specimen 16-1225 is very fine (thread count,
102 warps by 42 wefts per in.) and specimen 16-1234 is medium coarse
(count, 36 warps by 28 wefts per in.). Both cloths are allover
striped. Edge stripes occur on a relatively fine cloth, specimen
16-1255a (count, 62 warps by 40 wefts per in.), and also on a coarse
cloth (count, 28 warps by 24 wefts per in.).
Five cloths in the Chincha lot are allover striped. One (16-1252) has
solid blue and brown stripes at irregular intervals. The arrangement
contrasts with the regularity of the other allover-striped materials
and of the symmetrical plaids. Other allover stripes (fig. 8,a; pl.
7,c) have units a quarter-inch wide, brown on a neutral ground.
There is both color and texture interest in these specimens. The brown
warp units are in pairs, the neutral-color warp units between each two
brown units are alternately all single warps and all pairs of warps.
As a result, every other neutral-color stripe is appreciably thinner
than its neighbor stripes (pl. 7,c). The third allover striped
specimen (16-1224) is alternately blue and neutral color, each stripe
unit approximately one-sixteenth inch wide (fig. 8,c). Specimen
16-1225 has striping in the same colors and to it is seamed a piece
with blue on a reddish-orange ground. The blues appear to have been
the same, but the cloth, otherwise in good condition, is so badly
faded that the photograph does not reveal the stripes in the
blue-orange section (pl. 5,d). The fourth allover-stripe pattern is
common to two specimens, one of them shown in figure 8,b. The colors
blue and tan stand out from a neutral ground. The sequence is
blue-blue-tan, blue-blue-tan, and repeat. The stripes measure
one-sixteenth inch in width and are about the same distance apart.
[Illustration: Fig. 7. Schematic representations of stripings with
color changes indicated by symbols. Units consisting of pairs of warps
represented by pairs of triangles. Chevron marks center of bilateral
groupings of colors.]
The four fragments symmetrically plaided with an identical arrangement
of warp and weft stripes (16-1279; 16-1303) probably came from the
same cloth despite the different numbers.
Edge stripes, the most numerous group, vary in width from
three-sixteenths inch to one and three-eighths inch. They are simple
in construction, eight of the thirteen being symmetrical both in
arrangement and count of colored warps. The semblance of balance is
marked, also, in those stripes which are not symmetrical.
The edge stripes with two exceptions (16-1260, a kerchief, and full
breadth 16-1287) border only one of the selvages on the complete
widths analyzed for this section. The opposite selvages have hanging
threads, remnants of the stitchery which originally seamed two
breadths together. The stripes decorated the outside edges of this
seamed rectangle.
No specimen in the Chincha plain-weave group has stripes showing more
than three colors, exclusive of the color of the ground material. The
ground color is usually neutral and may originally have been white or
brown cotton. The most frequently occurring color in the stripes is
brown, followed by blue. Red and rose occur only twice.
In five specimens we found the warps used in pairs. In specimens
16-1224 (fig. 7,a) and 16-1280 (fig. 7,k) the colored warps are
paired, the ground is set up with single warps; in 16-1240 (fig.
7,j), the stripe warps and certain sections of the ground warps are
paired, the greater portion is set up with single warps. In several
specimens the otherwise uniform setup of single colored warps is
broken by a warp unit comprising a pair (fig. 7,f), and in two
specimens (cf. fig. 7,d) the series of single warps is broken by two
pairs of warps in one of the stripes. These units may have been
deliberately planned by the weaver, since they are maintained for the
entire length of the preserved stripe.
All of the Chincha striped cloths examined for this study were woven
either in the over-one-under-one interlacing or its variation, twin
warps crossed by single weft, a technique sometimes designated as the
semibasket weave. What textural differences there are between the
colored stripes and the ground material are the results of combining
the single-warp plain weave with its twin-warp variation. The
following tabulation shows the occurrences of these two techniques
among the thirteen striped pieces in figure 7:
No. of
Weave of ground material Weave in stripes specimens