Desarrollo del sistema de instrumentación

Textile dyes generally come from organic materials: roots, bark, wood, leaves, and flowers of plants, as well as from secretions and parts of cer- tain animals. Often the source materials—the flowers, stems, roots, or insects—need to be gathered at specific times within the life cycles of the plants or animals. Knowing when and where to collect the materi- als used for dyeing requires knowledge and monitoring of environmental

11. See Phipps, Hecht, and Esteras Martín, The Colonial Andes, pp. 290–292 (cat. no. 99 by Phipps).

12. Phipps, “Color in the Andes,” p. 53.

13. See Phipps, Hecht, and Esteras Martín, Colonial Andes, pp. 190–191 (cat. no. 39 by Elena Phipps).

conditions, familiarity with local habitats, and understanding of seasonal changes in climate and temperature.

Before the Conquest, knowledge of plants, including their medicinal and dye properties, was the purview of specialists, the camayos, in Inca terminology. In the early seventeenth century, Martín de Murúa provided a list of Inca officials, noting that “Indians who have as their work the gathering of the colors with which they dye the clothing … are called

tulpu camayo.”14 _{Murúa also wrote that the “pau aupallac dye the wool}

diverse colors to make cumbi [fine cloth] for the Sun, for the idols, and

the Inca.”15 _{Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala remarks that pauau pallac}

14. Murúa, Historia general del Perú, Madrid 1986, p. 402. González Holguín’s Quechua dictionary, originally published in 1952, included the entry “Tullpuycamayoc: El Tintorero,” that is, “the dyer”; see González Holguín, Vocabulario de la lengua general de todo el Perú, p. 345.

15. Murúa, Historia general del Perú, Madrid 1986, p. 399 (my translation).

Fig. 9. Woman’s wedding mantle, 17th century. Silk with metallic threads.

Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York. Gift of John Pierpont Morgan, acc. no. 1902-1-782.

were young girls between the ages of nine and twelve who “gather flowers

to dye wool, for cumbi and ropas [clothing], and other things” (fig. 10).16

Once a quantity of material is collected, the coloring component must be extracted from its source. Sometimes the dye is extracted from freshly gathered materials, immediately after collection of the plant or animal, but at other times these source materials are dried prior to extrac- tion. Freshly produced dyes may be used immediately, or the colorant

16. Guamán Poma de Ayala, Nueva crónica y buen gobierno, p. 220 (my translation). See also Guamán Poma de Ayala, El primer nueva crónica y buen gobierno, p. 228 [230]. Viewable online at http://www.kb.dk/permalink/2006/poma/230/en/text/ (verified as of 1 July 2010).

itself, once extracted, may be dried to facilitate storage and transport, and then used to dye fibers or cloth weeks, months, or even years later. Being organic, however, these colorants are subject to degradation over time; through exposure to air and moisture, they lose some of their potency.

The most basic and essential component of all dyebaths is water, and its purity—that is, its naturally occurring mineral and biological content— has a direct effect on the dyeing process and the resultant colors. The Inca clearly understood and respected the varying properties of water, and differentiated their springs and water sources according to quality and type. According to El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, for example, “the city of Cuzco itself has no good springs. During 1555–1556 they brought in Tisatica water from a spring a quarter of a league away from the city. It

is very good and was brought down to the main square.”17

Some dyes require the use of mineral salts, or mordants, to produce a strong and fast color, one that will be permanent and resistant to washing, sunlight, and air. A common mordant such as alum was sometimes mined in crystal form but was more generally made through burning the leaves of certain aluminum-containing plants to form an ash that was used for

dyeing.18

Master dyers—the camayocs—understood the properties of each indi- vidual dyestuff, and by adding particular materials to the bath, they could shift the hues to the desired colors. Certain berries, for example, provided alkalinity, while acids came from lemons, both of which had an impact on the resulting colors. Bernabé Cobo, in his Historia del Nuevo Mundo of 1653, was the first to observe that some type of mordant was used that

allowed a dyer to modify a red dyebath to achieve a blue or purplish hue.19

This process is still used today, as recorded in 1988 in Ana Roquero’s field

observations of the work of cochineal dyers from Ecuador.20

Indigo is one dye that does not require a mordant. The plant grows throughout the tropical and semitropical regions, and has been used since the early periods of pre-Columbian Peruvian textile production (fig. 11).

17. He also notes, for example, that in the making of the drink called aca, the Inca pre- ferred to use water that was brackish because clean, sweet water did not make the drink taste good; see El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General His- tory of Peru, p. 322.

18. See Roquero, Tintes y tintoreros de América, 2006, pp. 91–105. 19. See Cobo, Historia del Nuevo Mondo [1653], pp. 113–116. 20. Roquero, Tintes y tintoreros de América, 2006, p. 149.

Fig. 10. “Pauau Pallac. Que estas muchachas coxían flores para tiñir

lana, para cunbis [tejido fino] y rropas y otras cosas.” Guamán Poma de Ayala, Nuevo Crónica y Buen Gobierno, 1615, fol. ______. Royal Library, Copenhagen, MS.______.

We do not know why, but for some reason, the Inca rarely used indigo and we find it only in certain extraordinary ritual tunics, such as the blue

tunic found in the high-altitude ritual burial of Ampato.21 _{However, the}

dye was used extensively in colonial-period tapestries, where, curiously, it was often used to depict a small rodent, the viscacha. We find these blue animals woven into the borders of many colonial tapestries, and it would seem that the animal achieved near-mythical stature. It lives in regions where no other mammals can survive, such as the salt lakes of highland Bolivia, and even today is used as a talisman for good luck and health. The fact that it often appears in blue—which we know was a spe- cial color—may underscore its importance and provide a glimpse into a

native expression incorporated into a European artistic context.22

The process of dyeing with indigo is very complex, requiring extrac- tion of the color from the fresh leaves of the plant (Indigofera suffruticosa, the American species) and the careful execution of a series of changes in the chemical state of the dyebath. The first step is the extraction of the color from the fresh leaves, resulting in an insoluble colorant. This needs to be transformed from its oxidized and insoluble state to a reduced, sol- uble state (referred to as indigo white, although it is actually a yellowish color) that can be used for dyeing, and then must oxidized back to an insoluble blue state, a change that occurs directly in the cloth or fiber. This method is based on an understanding of the processes of fermenta- tion and the effects of bacterial development (if not of bacteria them- selves), as well as the careful manipulation and balancing of acids and alkalis throughout the dyeing procedure.

With the relative absence of indigo in the southern Andean region— whether for cultural or environmental reasons—the Spanish began at an early date to import indigo from Mexico and Guatemala to Peru for their

obraje, or textile workshops.23 _{In one eighteenth-century Cusco obraje, the}

21. See Phipps, Turner, and Trentelman, “Colors, Textiles, and Artistic Production,” p. 128, fig. 4.

22. See Phipps, Hecht, and Esteras Martín, Colonial Andes, pp. 214–215 (cat. no. 53 by Phipps); see also figs. 118, 122.

23. Acosta mentions that indigo (“añir”) from New Spain (Mexico) was shipped by fleets (flotas) that also carried cochineal in quantity; see Acosta, Historia natural y moral de las Indias (1590; reprint 1998), p. 255.

registers of alcabalas (taxes on visiting merchants) indicate that most of

the indigo used during a one-year period was brought from Guatemala.24

Another dyestuff that the Spanish obrajes used to produce purple came from tropical dye woods: brazilwood and logwood (Caesalpinia and

Haematoxylon, which grew outside the central Andean region.25 _While

easy to use in comparison to the complexity of indigo, this dyestuff does

24. Escandell-Tur, Producción y comercio de tejidos colonials, p. 196, for obraje of 1786– 87; see also Phipps, “Cumbi to Tapestry,” p. 98, n. 69.

25. Lewin, ed., Descripción del Virreinato del Perú.

Fig. 11. Indigo. Baltasar Jaime Martínez Compañón y Bujanda,

(1735–1797), Trujillo del Perú. 9 vols. 1780s. Vol. __, page/folio __. Madrid Royal Library, MS. _________.

not seem to have been used by the royal weavers of the Inca, probably because they were aware of its fugitive nature, as the bright purple color fades easily to brown or beige in sunlight. While Andean dyers may have had access to these wood dyes, they more commonly created purple by sequential overdyeing of indigo blue and a red dye, usually cochineal.

Cochineal, called macnu by the Inca and grana by Spanish chroni- clers, is an insect that lives on the Opuntia ficus-indica, or prickly pear cactus. The insects were harvested from the cactus two or three times a year, and were dried in the sun (fig. 12). They were also used in Mexico, where they were cultivated intensively. Since no documents have yet been found on the cultivation of cochineal in Peru, most of what is known about the process comes from two major works on Mexican production, by Gonzalo Gómez de Cervantes (1599) and José Antonio de Alzate y

Ramírez (1777).26 _{Both speak extensively about the cultivation of the}

26. See Dahlgren de Jordán, La grana cochinilla (which includes Gómez de Cer- vantes, La vida económica y social de Nueva España); and Alzate y Ramírez, Memoria sobre la naturaleza.

nopales (the cacti), the care of the mother insects, and the transplanta- tion of the pregnant mothers onto the cactus pads. All of course, also described by Bernardino Sahagún in book 11, chapter 11 (“Los colores”) of the Florentine Codex.

Once the insects were harvested, they could be dried in several ways, each of which affected their appearance. Andean dyers created balls or

cakes of the insects, which were dried and stored (fig. 13).27 _{These cakes,}

or panes as they were and are called in Peru even today, are still part of the

dye preparation process in Ecuador.28 _{We know that the Spanish shipped}

cochineal extensively as early as 1534. Thousands of tons crossed the

Atlantic, an export second only to silver, both from Mexico and Peru.29

The Spanish merchants preferred the shipments of dried loose insects, rather than those compressed into cake or ball form, because the quality could be more readily controlled. As Alexander von Humboldt described in his Essai politique, by the 1760s it was decreed that “cochineal would be grain séparé so that the Indians are not able to introduce strange mate-

rial within their agglutinated masses.”30

Such masses were also made from annatto—the seeds of the Bixa orelanna, called achiote. Occurring from Mexico to South America, this yellow colorant, because of its extremely fugitive nature, was typically used in tropical regions for food preparation or for hair and body paint rather than dyeing of textiles. Annatto was exported to Europe to produce yellow silks and also as a finishing overdye for scarlet reds, one of the most important textile types of the sixteenth through eighteenth centu- ries. Some 5,400 pounds of annatto were carried on the Nuevo Constante, a Spanish ship in a fleet returning to Cadiz carrying cargo from both Central and South America. Leaving from Veracruz laden with dyestuffs and silver, it was lost in a hurricane off the coast of Louisiana in 1766. Remarkably, when the wreck was salvaged in the 1990s, some of its cone-

shaped clusters of annatto had survived (fig. 14).31 _{The Nuevo Constante}

27. Phipps, “Color in the Andes,” pp. 51–59.

28. Roquero, Tintes y tintoreros de América, 2006, pp. 148–149.

29. Acosta, Historia natural y moral de las Indias (1590; reprint 1998). See also Lee, “American Cochineal,” pp. 205–24; and Donkin, “Spanish Red,” pp. 3–84.

30. Humboldt, Essai politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle-Espagne, vol. 3, p. 262: “des matières étrangères dan ces masses agglutinées appelées bodoques”; see also Donkin, “Spanish Red,” p. 19.

31. Information on the Nuevo Constante is viewable online at the site produced by the Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, in concert with the Louisiana

Fig. 12. Cochineal insect. Alzate y Ramírez, Memoria sobre la naturaleza,

cultivo y beneficio del la grana…, 1777, folio/p. _____. The Newberry Library, Chicago, Ayer MS. 1031.

carried other dyestuffs, notably over ten thousand pounds of cochineal, nearly three thousand pounds of indigo, and forty thousand pounds of

colored tropical dye woods shipped as whole logs.32

The export of dyes from the Americas had an extensive impact on the European textile industry. Major centers of textile production in Spain, Italy, France, the Netherlands, and England shifted their dyeing practices

to accommodate the newfound and readily available dyestuffs.33 _{The geo-}

graphical distribution of the prized dyestuff from the Americas was exten- sive. As Sahagún noted in the 1570s, cochineal was shipped “to China

and to Turkey and beyond.”34