This week’s Nalbound Object of the Week is a beautiful cross-knit looping example. A border of warriors and their sacrifice, originally intended to be attached to a piece of fabric. If you go to the The Art Institute of Chicago’s website there is a very good zoom function and some close-ups showing the underlying support worked in Simple Looping.

CC0 Public Domain
Object: Border of warriors
Description: A border of warriors and a sacrifice. The figures are about 2.5 inches tall. More details on The Art Institute of Chicago’s website.
Dated to: 100 BCE–200 CE1
Culture: Nazca2
Find location: South coast, Peru3
Material: Cotton (ground), Camelid wool4
Stitch(es) used: Simple Looping for the ground support, cross-knit looping and cross-knit loop stitch embroidery5
Inventory number: 1956.1267.3a-h
Current location: The Art Institute of Chicago®
Link to museum catalog or other data: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/148858/warrior-fragments
Some sources in which more information can be found:
Sawyer, Alan R. Early Nasca Needlework. London: Laurence King Publishing, 1997. pg. 148, color fig. 117.
Photographs (if permissions allow):
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- The Art Institute of Chicago® https://www.artic.edu/artworks/148858/warrior-fragments ↩︎
- The Art Institute of Chicago® https://www.artic.edu/artworks/148858/warrior-fragments ↩︎
- The Art Institute of Chicago® https://www.artic.edu/artworks/148858/warrior-fragments ↩︎
- The Art Institute of Chicago® https://www.artic.edu/artworks/148858/warrior-fragments ↩︎
- The Art Institute of Chicago® https://www.artic.edu/artworks/148858/warrior-fragments ↩︎
Love these! So much humor and detail on such a small scale. Thanks for sharing this. Made my day!
I love how they say the loin cloth wearing person is otherwise bare so is proposed to be a sacrifice, not that it is the one with his head upside down.