The Metropolitan Museum of Art

When was the last time your visited a museum?  Did you know that museums have fabric exhibits and fashion collections?  For instance, you do not have to leave home and you can visit The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York via the Internet.  You can spend many happy hours visiting the fashion collections or looking at vintage fabric.  Enjoy an online tour the next time your need a new muse.  

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Feathered Hanging

Date: 7th–8th century

• The blue-and yellow-feathered textiles were made of macaw feathers, and it is presumed that they were used to decorate the walls of large compounds or courts on special occasions. A group of feathered hangings, to which this one belongs, were accidentally discovered in the early 1940s, when a large cache of ninety-six of them was reported in a find near the Ocoña River in southern Peru. The textiles had been rolled and placed in large decorated ceramic jars that were more than three feet high.  

  
  

  The feathered textiles of Peru are among the most luxurious textile products of the ancient world. Each feather is individually sewn to a cotton base-fabric, and the surfaces are thus built up to a soft, downy skin of radiant color. The feathers of tropical birds, from the Amazon jungles in eastern Peru, made the most brilliantly colored textiles, and the intense blues, greens, reds, and yellows were highly prized. 

Reference:  The Metropolitan Museum of Art, (2012) - Textile Collection, http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/50005258 retrieved 1/16/2012